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The Stars and the Book 



The Stars and the Book 

Sermons preached in St. James Methodist 
Episcopal Church, Chicago 

By 

Camden M. Cobern, D. D. 

Author of 

"Bible Etchings of Immortality," Etc. 



CINCINNATI: JENNINGS AND GRAHAM 
NEW YORK: EATON AND MAINS 



Two oopies f?ere)v»d 
3CT l 1904 

COPY B 



COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY 
JENNINGS AND GRAHAM 





CONTENTS 






* 




Chapter 




I. 


The Stars and the Book, 


7 


II. 


Jesus as a Conversationalist, - 


28 


III. 


The Builder of Christianity, 


44 


IV. 


The Cross, 


60 


V. 


The Divinity of Man, - 


78 


VI. 


The Humanity of God, 


93 


VII. 


Paul and Nero — A Historical 
Contrast, 


106 


VIII. 


The Silence of Jesus Concerning 
the Future Life a Revelation 
of Joy, 


123 



I. 



THE STARS AND THE BOOK. 

A Pl<EA FOR THE CRITICAL STUDY OF THE SCRIP- 
TURES. 

"The heavens . . . the law of the Lord." — 
Psa. xix. 

In this psalm the noble truth is most forcibly 
expressed that God's Word is as wonderful as the 
heavens. If God is the one God who created and 
governs all worlds, the same method of work should 
be seen in all. If God is the creator of the Bible we 
ought to be able to distinguish peculiarities and 
marks which stamp it as being from the same hand 
as the stars. We can do this. In origin and pur- 
pose; in magnitude and hidden values God's Word 
and God's worlds correspond. 

The book has wide horizons. It is as big as a 
world. It fills the centuries and bursts through the 
walls of partition between nations and races. As 
there is no French mathematics or German as- 

7 



8 



The: Stars and the; Book. 



tronomy or English physics but true science is a unit 
and all scholars brothers, so the Book appeals to 
all classes and ages and races ; and as nature yields 
her secrets continuously to every seeker, so the Bible 
is full of hidden truth. Nature has constant sur- 
prises. One spoonful of earth beneath our door- 
step contains enough mystery — enough possibilities 
of new knowledge — to keep the scientist busy all his 
life. The number of known stars has doubled since 
we were boys. No one can exhaust the universe. 

Whatever God makes is packed full of infinity. 
Any universe that had no mysteries in it could not 
come from an Infinite God. Any religion or book of 
religion without deep mysteries could not come from 
an Infinite God. This is one of the mason marks 
on all God's buildings. Nothing is farther from the 
truth than the common idea that the Bible is an easy 
book to understand. It needs study as much as the 
heavens. St. Jerome, some fifteen hundred years 
ago, wrote: "There is no old woman so ignorant 
nor stupid that she will not set herself up as an in- 
terpreter of the Bible." Such assumptions are most 
foolish, most immodest, most unbiblical. It is true 
that the wayfaring man, though a fool, can run and 
read, but it would be far better if he were not a fool, 
and would not read on the run. The Bible does not 



The; Stars and the Book. 



9 



say such a hasty reader will not err in theology and 
Scripture interpretation, but that even such a fool 
may still be able to see the way of salvation. The 
most ignorant man can get enough light from the 
sun to walk by, but it does not make him an as- 
tronomer. 

The Bible is no primer. It is God's greatest 
revelation. It needs study in order properly to 
understand it, more than Plato, more than the 
stars. If we need telescopes and microscopes and 
chemical laboratories and all possible learning to un- 
derstand something of God's worlds — so with God's 
Word. Every new discovery opens new beauties and 
wonders in it and enough truth still remains undis- 
covered to make wise men rejoice for a thousand 
millenniums — truth which the angels might well de- 
sire to look into. This is because both of the Word 
and of the heavens it may be written, 

"The hand that made us is divine." 

If the God who made the world is the God who 
gave us the Bible, no new discovery can be opposed 
to the Bible. The other day in Plymouth, Mass., I 
read these words, written by John Robinson in 1620: 
"I am very confident that the Lord has yet more 
truth to break forth out of His Holy Word. The 



io The Stars and the Book. 



Lutherans can not be drawn to go beyond what 
Luther said. Whatever part of His will our good 
God has revealed to Calvin they will rather die than 
embrace it. And the Calvinists, you see, stick fast 
where they were left by that great man of God — 
who yet saw not all things." John Robinson was 
more modern than some theologians of to-day. 

God's choicest secrets, hidden in the sun or in 
the Word are not revealed to the ignorant or indo- 
lent ; a man needs to study as well as pray. I know 
a man who has spent a fortune and a lifetime study- 
ing the earth and the stars, asking, "When were 
these made and how; what was God's method in 
creation?" I know other men who have spent all 
they ever earned and a lifetime seeking to learn all 
that is possible about God's Book ; when it was writ- 
ten, and how. All honor to the men who are will- 
ing to impoverish themselves in order to find out 
the truth, even if they reach wrong conclusions, 
sometimes. Wrong results are not the worst thing. 
Failure to study is worse. The astronomer builds 
to-day correct conclusions on the facts discovered 
thousands of years ago by those who reached wrong 
conclusions. If they had not gathered the facts we 
could not to-day be where we are, astronomically. 
Shall we forbid every one to speak concerning God's 



The Stars and the Book. 



ii 



worlds and God's Word, except those who can speak 
with infallible knowledge and inerrant logic ? Then, 
indeed, there must come a silence on the earth, equal 
to that which the Revelator heard in heaven. No 
one could speak unless he thought himself a pope. 

For one, I am not afraid of the truth. I be- 
lieve this Book can stand the most critical examina- 
tion as to its origin, its composition, its accuracy, 
its spiritual supremacy and aloneness. If I did not 
believe this I would not believe that it was from 
God. No other religious book of the ancient world 
can bear the scrutiny of modern scholarship as the 
Bible can. I do not ask skeptics to use an easier 
test or a different test when they examine these 
Bible documents than when they examine other an- 
cient documents. Let them use their hardest tests. 
God can be trusted to take care of His own Word 
and of the stars, else, 

" The solid firmament is rottenness 
And earth's base built on stubble." 

That is the reason I look with favor on the 
"higher criticism," and every other criticism which 
applies historic and literary tests to this great reve- 
lation. Some people are scared at criticism, but not 
those who believe that the Word of the Lord en- 



12 The; Stars and the: Book. 

dureth forever. No discoveries, however opposed 
to his old theories, can disturb a man of real faith. 
God will never let any theory be destroyed that is 
worth saving. Those who attempted to break the 
telescope of Galileo were not honoring the God of 
the stars. Nor is it a sufficient proof that a view is 
wrong because it is different from that of the 
fathers. The dearest old friend of my boyhood days 
used to say to me, "Do you see that clock in the 
corner? It ticks off sixty minutes every hour, and 
twenty-four hours every day. My Bible says God 
made this world in a hundred and forty-four hours, 
as ticked off by that clock. Anybody that says it 
was a hundred and forty-five hours is an infidel and 
an unbeliever, and does not accept the Word of 
God." He actually staked the word of eternal truth 
on his own theory, that God's days, in which he 
made the earth and the heavens were the same 
length to the second as those ticked off by his grand- 
father's clock. 

We see now that a man is not necessarily an in- 
fidel because he believes that God's method in crea- 
tion was a little different from what we thought it 
was when we were boys ; and such a change has not 
hurt either our religious experience or our reverence 
for the Bible. Whatever method God used in mak- 



The: Stars and the Book. 



13 



frig the world was a right method, and does not con- 
tradict the Bible when rightly understood. 

Whatever method God used in making the Bible 
was a right method. I can almost remember when 
men thought that God could only make a revelation 
according to one method, just as they had said He 
could only make the world according to one method. 
They said the Bible was false and valueless unless 
is was an infallible revelation which had been re- 
ceived, recorded, preserved, transmitted, copied, 
translated, and interpreted infallibly. No one be- 
lieves that now, unless it be some ignorant Roman 
Catholic. We Protestants, most of us, believe that 
the revelation was infallible, but that it was re- 
corded, transmitted, and translated by fallible human 
agents. And we now see that if a really true reve- 
lation ever came from God we may be perfectly 
confident that the method employed by Divine Provi- 
dence to record and preserve it must be the right 
method, however different from our preconceived 
notions. The man who honors and loves the Bible 
as well as the astronomer loves his science will take 
pains to find out what method God did use in mak- 
ing this revelation and sending it to man. 

That it is a revelation, even most scholarly skep- 
tics now acknowledge. It was a revelation to the 



14 



The Stars and the: Book. 



ancient world. India, Egypt, Babylon, Greece, 
Rome never discovered God's character and man's 
duty as it is revealed here. God did reveal to the 
holy prophets Himself, His holiness, almightiness, 
unity, fatherhood. Those holy prophets did know 
the truth about providence and sin and moral duty 
and human destiny, as the writers of the Rig" Veda 
and the Three Kings of China, and the Avesta and 
the Book of the Dead never imagined it. To the 
ancient world, wherever this book touched it, it 
came as a revelation. Gather out of all the sacred 
Books of the East their choicest sayings and put 
over against them only one leaf from the New 
Testament — almost any leaf grasped at random 
from the Book — and this one leaf will so shine with 
heavenly light as to put all the others in shadow. 
The Book has been breathed upon from above. 

It is an inspired — "inbreathed" — revelation. 
Men who were divinely inspired were men who felt 
upon them and within them the very breath of God. 
God once breathed upon Adam and he lived and 
could make others live. So the secret and power 
of the new spiritual life were breathed into Moses 
and Isaiah and David and Paul and John, and they 
became inspired men, and when they spake they 
spake living, life-giving words. That into these 



The Stars and the Book. 



15 



men God breathed a deeper and stronger spiritual 
life than could be found in any of their contempo- 
raries (or of ours) is proved by the Book itself; an 
inbreathed Book ; a Book of Life, alive with the very 
life breath of Deity. By its fruits ye shall know it. 
It is inspired, for it divinely inspires. If this is not 
the record of a true revelation from God, then is 
our faith vain that God has ever given such a reve- 
lation. 

There are those who believe in the "Inspira- 
tion of Humanity," and that the Hebrew prophets 
and New Testament apostles were only men like 
other men, who merely opened their souls to God's 
direction and influence better than others. It is a 
great thought. It means that Judas might have 
been St. Paul; and that anybody with equal abil- 
ity, who lived at the time, might have written Isaiah 
or Ezekiel or the twenty-third Psalm. It may be 
true, but I am not convinced. There seems to me 
a special directive, selective, protective influence 
upon these Bible writers. We see this as we com- 
pare them with other writers of equal ability who 
were their contemporaries, or as we compare what 
they have written with the best that has been done 
since. Religious insight reached its blossom and 
best fruitage in them. The Bible remains a revela- 



1 6 The: Stars and the Book. 

tion to the twentieth century, for it is still giving 
the standard of morals, of high thought and high 
living even to the skeptics of this era. 

But if this is a true revelation then we may be 
perfectly sure that the right method was used by 
Divine Providence to record and preserve it. What- 
ever scientific research may prove to have been 
God's method in giving this revelation, it can never 
cease to be the Christian's authoritative guide book. 
Man needs it as he needs the sun. He was created 
that way. The world has outgrown every other an- 
cient book, but it is only slowly growing up to this. 
"Thy word is settled in heaven." Celsus and 
Porphyry and Julian the Apostate are gone, but the 
Word of the Lord remains. Voltaire laughed loud 
as he said he had destroyed the Bible; but more 
Bibles have been published since he stopped laugh- 
ing than in all the previous millenniums since Moses. 
And the Book is not getting old. It is full of hope 
and buoyancy and the splendid optimism of youth. 
It seems as if the Ancient of Days had breathed 
upon it the breath of an eternal life. 

It is not the ink marks (the letters and words of 
the Book) that are inspired, but the thought and 
spirit of it. We ought to have learned that long 
ago by the quotations made by Jesus and the apos- 



The: Stars and the: Book. 



17 



ties. The recognition of this fact shatters most of 
the objections made against the trustworthiness of 
Scripture. 

Most modern criticism of the Bible is a crit- 
icism of the lantern and not of the light. Such 
criticism (even if true) would not imperil the Bible's 
inspiration any more than the breaking of a stylus 
in the hand of St. Paul would have imperiled his in- 
spiration, or than the passing of a cyclone over the 
sun's surface would hint that its light was not 
divinely created. The Rabbis emphasized the letter 
of the Scripture, and the most orthodox of these 
regarded the Septuagint as an impious book because 
the sacred letters and words were changed from He- 
brew to Greek ; but Jesus believed that he was prop- 
erly quoting the Holy Scriptures when he ignored 
the letter and gave merely the thought and spirit of 
the revelation. The "holy oracles" may be written 
in Hebrew or Greek, in the English of King James 
or of Victoria, it matters not, if the spiritual thought 
is given correctly. It would not matter seriously if 
the spelling were sometimes wrong and the numbers 
copied incorrectly, or the names misplaced occa- 
sionally, for all this was true of the Septuagint 
copy, which Jesus and the apostles used. It would 
not even seem to matter fatally if these inspired men 
2 



18 The Stars and the; Book. 



themselves had made a slip of the pen in putting 
down a number, or a slip of memory in quoting an 
ancient historian, or even a slip of knowledge in 
the use of the many documents which they them- 
selves tell us they consulted in their writings. That 
is not an important thing, if the spiritual argument 
can be trusted. We are injuring our cause to act 
and talk as if the Bible would be destroyed if any 
such incidental human infirmity could be detected in 
the Scriptures. 

Supposing that next year in the cave of 
Machpelah there should be found, along with the 
mummy of Joseph, a copy of the Pentateuch, 
or that in some secret room in the catacombs 
of Rome we should find a manuscript copy of one 
of the letters of St. Paul; and supposing it was 
found that originally, in the original manuscripts, 
an occasional mistake of spelling or grammar were 
found or even a slip of memory, would that inter- 
fere materially with the value of these discovered 
manuscripts or with the inspiration of their writers ? 
Not to my mind, or to the mind of orthodox scholars 
generally. 

In nature nothing is too weak or imperfect 
to be used by the perfect God to work His per- 
fect will. There are spots even on the sun and the 



The; Stars and the; Book. 



19 



moon is scarred and broken; yet these are God's 
light-bearers. It ought not to appall us if we 
should find the same peculiarities and marks in 
God's Word as in God's worlds, stamping it 
as being controlled by the same hand that 
rules the heavens. The most impressive book 
that Darwin ever wrote was that on earth- 
worms, in which he showed that all the fertile soil 
of the planet was created by these worms, and the 
most startling thing in Professor Wallace's last 
book on astronomy is his statement that it is the 
dust in the atmosphere which makes the planet hab- 
itable. It is the millions of imperfect blossoms that 
fall and never come to fruitage which prepare the 
earth for undreamed of beauties of fruit and foliage 
in time to come. So man, the imperfect, may be 
ordained of God to teach His perfect will. The 
nation of Israel could receive, even from such im- 
perfect men as Moses and David and Solomon and 
Elijah a law which — though not perfect, as Jesus 
Himself taught — could be the schoolmaster to bring 
the world up nearer to God's idea. The fact that 
God can use imperfect agents to work out His per- 
fect will (and make the ignorance as well as the 
wrath of man to praise Him) is an evidence of wis- 
dom. So a wise man has recently taken the refuse 



20 



The; Stars and the Book. 



of the silk factory and made out of it a velvet almost 
incomparably more beautiful and precious than the 
perfect silk. 

Therefore if any man tells me that the Old 
Testament or New Testament writers were im- 
perfect in character or knowledge — that one man 
quoted Zephaniah when he meant to quote Zecha- 
riah, and that (perhaps because he had not been a 
good Bible student in early life) Stephen put the 
grave of one of the patriarchs in the wrong field, or 
that Moses had rather an imperfect idea of modern 
astronomy and geology and did not express himself 
with scientific accuracy — I simply say that the less 
these men knew and the more nearly they were akin 
in knowledge to the ignorant age in which they 
lived the more will I revere the work the Almighty 
God has been able to do through them. God's mark 
is on them and their work. Paul thanked God for 
his imperfections, because God could thus get 
greater glory through the work he did. 

Personally, I do not pretend to any superior 
knowledge as to what will be the condition of the 
original Mosaic or Apostolic manuscripts if we ever 
find them. These men may have been infallible pen- 
men, grammarians, historians, and scientists, or they 
may not. That must be determined by the evidence. 



The Stars and the; Book. 



21 



But in any case the Bible is going to remain, even 
if our ideas of how the Lord gave the Word change. 
The Bible itself speaks of the prophets and apostles 
as men of like infirmities as we are, and in any case 
they were human. The Book is from God, but it 
comes to us from the pens of men who were human 
— does not this make the Book more entrancingly 
interesting ? 

What a Book this is ! Here are fragments 
from royal pens, and long sections from the 
swineherd and the shepherd; a passage from an 
Egyptian general and an entire book from one of 
the captives in Babylon j one section from a Persian 
prince and another from a Roman official, and still 
another from a learned Greek scholar, and long sec- 
tions from some uneducated Galilean fishermen. 
Here are chapters containing histories so ancient 
that no other record in the world made mention of 
them till in our times the tombs of the Nile and the 
Euphrates were opened and the dead came from 
their graves to bear witness to the truth of the old 
Book. Here are chapters written in the center of 
Asia, and others from the coast of Africa and others 
still from the capital of Europe. Here are frag- 
ments of songs that antedate by many centuries the 
songs of Homer, and others written by contempora- 



22 



The; Stars and the; Book. 



ries of iEschylus and Sappho and Sophocles ; and 
others still composed after Greek and Roman poetry 
of the best type had perished. Each one of these 
Bible authors has marked peculiarities of style, fa- 
vorite words, illustrations, figures of speech. The 
Lord spoke through them, but He did not destroy 
their individuality. Amos, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Luke, 
John, Paul, each writes in a style all his own. The 
spirit is divine, but the penmanship, the style, the 
vocabulary, the phrasing of the thought, that is 
human, colored with the temperament of the writer, 
colored by his environment, possibly by his ignor- 
ance. 

These men were not "mediums" simply used 
as mouths by their controlling spirit. They were 
not simply inspired pens, but inspired men. That is 
much better. Men can be "witnesses" and pens 
can not. Out of the depths of their own being, 
touched by contact with the living God, these holy 
men spoke and wrote what they saw and felt, and 
no criticism of their method of giving the revela- 
tion can effect in any degree adversely the value, 
potency, and divinity of the message itself. 

If these were honest men, and have given an 
honest record of what they saw and heard then all 
else that they say becomes credible. Jesus is the 



The: Stars and the: Book. 



23 



supreme miracle of the Bible, and if these men saw 
what they say they saw, and heard what they say 
they heard, Jesus is a fact, and His power to heal 
and forgive is a fact, and the fact of prophecy ful- 
filled in Jesus puts the divine stamp of truth upon 
all that variegated Scripture which "spake of Him." 
We call the Bible as a whole God's Book; not be- 
cause we must give up our Bible if it is proved that 
the Song of Solomon or Second Peter, or Jude 
were not written by the men we thought they were ; 
or that Jonah is a parable and Genesis is a poetical 
picture-story instead of literal history; but because 
as a whole the Old Testament is pervaded by the 
same great holy hope of a coming One; and the 
New Testament is pervaded with the holy joy of 
One who is come. Jesus Christ is the vindication 
of Old Testament prophecy and the certification of 
New Testament theology. 

We call this the Holy Bible, not because 
each letter is sacred, nor because it was written 
miraculously, but because it contains a holy mes- 
sage from a Holy God, which, if accepted, can 
make us holy. No other book on earth can do 
this. It does. That holy message has passed into 
human hearts and been written down by human 



24 



The Stars and the Book. 



hands, and therefore necessarily bears marks of 
human weakness, perhaps even of human imper- 
fection, but it is God's message to men none the less. 
The style is human; the knowledge of current 
events and current science is human; but the mes- 
sage — that for which the Book was written, that 
which makes it the Bible — is divine. What need 
we care for the name of the prophet who wrote the 
fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, or whether one prophet 
or three prophets wrote it? Let the critics settle 
that. What we do care to know is whether the 
Man of Sorrows has indeed come, bearing our sor- 
rows and carrying our griefs, wounded for our 
transgressions and bruised for our iniquities and 
whether with His stripes we can now be healed. 

Is this revelation concerning God and Jesus 
Christ and His power to save true ? Yes, it is eter- 
nally true. These men can be trusted. Those who 
have made the most careful study of all the objec- 
tions raised against the truth of the Bible tell us 
to-day with unanimous voice that there never was 
a history written in all the ancient world as ac- 
curate and careful and minutely correct as this. We 
do not know the names of all those ancient scribes 
who wrote the Pentateuch, the Judges, the Kings, 



The Stars and the Book. 



25 



and the Prophets, nor do we know the exact date at 
which all these books were written. But they were 
not written by dishonest men, who have willfully 
misrepresented the facts. Modern archaeology wit- 
nesses to that. The "Lord and Master of us all" 
witnesses to that. Jesus trusted the Old Testament. 
His creed ought to be ours. These writers of the 
Old and New Testaments used all their faculties to 
tell the exact truth. The character of the writers, 
we know, proves that, and the character of the writ- 
ings. People are not willing to be martyrs for what 
they do not believe very thoroughly. 

The Voltaire of America once pictured before 
an audience the tortures of the Inquisition, and 
added, "There is not much of the martyr about 
me. I would have told them, 'Now you write 
it down, and I '11 sign it. You may have one 
God or a million; you may have one hell or a 
million ; you stop that !' " Those were his own 
words. He actually confessed that he would have 
turned Judas to his most cherished convictions, 
if the thumbscrew were put on. That shows what 
a man would endure for his faith that the Bible was 
not true. Now call the roll of Christian martyrs, 
who were persecuted and beaten, sawn asunder; 



26 



The Stars and the; Book. 



suffered the violence of fire; and felt the teeth of 
lions because of their faith in the truth of this reve- 
lation of God. Name one of them that ever made a 
penny out of his religion. Name one of them, be it 
prophet, apostle, or evangelist, who did not count all 
things as dung that he might win God's favor and 
proclaim God's message worthily. No danger could 
daunt them ; no threat could frighten them, no scorn 
could silence them; no sorrows could overwhelm 
them. They were joyously willing to face prison 
and poverty and martyrdom in proof of the truth 
of their message. 

Such were the men who wrote these Scrip- 
tures; and they can be trusted. The Word of 
the Lord endureth forever. That Word is yet 
the power of God unto salvation. The Bible, ac- 
cording to its own affirmation, is a book of light 
and life, and it is yet perfect for the purpose for 
which it was given. As a Book of Salvation, not 
even the infidels have any substitute to propose. It 
was not given to teach history or philosophy or 
science, but to teach religion. It was not given to 
dazzle the eyes or show the scenery, but to walk by. 
It does what it claims to do. It was given to be a 
light to the feet ; no one denies that it is that. This 



The Stars and the: Book. 



27 



is the only book that is sunlight to the path, every- 
where and for evermore. That is what the Bible 
is for. 

The Psalmist was right. The splendor of God's 
Word is as great as that of the sun, and it would 
be as easy to push the sun out of its course as to 
jolt this Book from its march of victory. 



II. 



JESUS AS A CONVERSATIONALIST. 

"Did not our heart burn within us while He talked 
with us?" — Luke xxiv, 32. 

Jesus was pre-eminently a talker. He was not 
an orator, nor an elocutionist, nor a declaimer; He 
was simply a wonderful talker. He "taught" and 
"preached," it is true, but His teaching and preach- 
ing was chiefly conversational. Jesus did not need 
to lift Himself above the people in order to seem 
great. The Rockies do not need to be hoisted upon 
stilts. Jesus lived down among the people, and 
talked with them at the table and by the wayside, 
opening to them the Scriptures, and lifting them 
up where they could get the "heavenly vision." 

It is not an easy thing to be always great in 
conversation and at the same time great other- 
wise. The world's best thinkers have not ordi- 
narily been its best talkers. Addison was the star 
of his generation as a writer; but sat silent at all 

28 



Jesus as a Conversationalist. 29 

evening parties. Longfellow was wrong when he 
declared he was the only American since the Dec- 
laration of Independence that could not make a 
stump-speech, for Hawthorne was as diffident as 
he, and when Washington Irving tried to introduce 
Charles Dickens to a New England audience he 
was compelled to sit down in utter confusion. Men 
of the deepest thought, who have necessarily cul- 
tivated the habit of meditation and mental abstrac- 
tion, seldom excel in conversation. Yet here is 
one, the profoundest Philosopher of all, whose talk 
is the most captivating of all. 

How spontaneous it is — the talk of this Man of 
Galilee! Macaulay had such a memory that he 
could repeat the "Lay of the Last Minstrel" and the 
first six books of "Paradise Lost" without missing a 
word, and yet it is said that he prepared for special 
occasions that he might talk brilliantly. It is even 
reported that a friend calling unexpectedly upon 
that most celebrated of all talkers, Madame de 
Stael, picked up one of her notebooks and found it 
entitled "Remarks to be Used in Conversation." 
These all felt it necessary to guard against the dan- 
gers of extemporaneous speech, wisely whispering, 

" My tongue within my lips I rein 
For who talks much must talk in vain." 



30 The; Stars and the: Book. 

It was our own "Autocrat of the Breakfast-table" 
who said, "Talking is one of the fine arts — the 
noblest, the most important, the most difficult. It 
is better to lose a pint of blood from your veins 
than to have a nerve tapped." 

Yet here is one extemporaneous talker who 
never fails, never falls to the common level, nor 
even below his own best efforts. The table-talks 
of Coleridge, of Luther, of Oliver Wendell Holmes 
seem commonplace when compared with His. 
Questioned by the learned doctors, whose life had 
been given to study and controversy ; questioned by 
the shrewd, acute, practical business men; ques- 
tioned by friends or enemies on the most delicate 
and subtle subjects, his answers were always ready, 
always clear, always confident. He was never em- 
barrassed. He never hesitated. Pope Innocent 
would delay an answer to an inconvenient question 
by a convenient cough, but of this One it is writ- 
ten, "He answered, and said ;" and often the answer 
was given while the question was yet trembling 
unasked upon the lips. What royal spontaneity of 
utterance is this when one can be always talking 
and all his talk worth remembering for two thou- 
sand years ! 

Consider also the ease and simplicity of His 



Jssus as a Conversationalist. 31 

speech. One could not imagine a notebook under 
his cloak in which these bon mots were written out. 
Everything is beautifully unconventional, inartifi- 
cial, unstudied. He does not cry nor lift up His 
voice in the streets ; He simply talks. But although 
His conversation is simplicity itself, like the few 
lines of Michael Angelo in Raphael's studio, it is 
enough. No other than He could have done it. 
It is the stroke of the master. Its simplicity adds 
to its greatness. 

" Truth shines brightest through plainest dress." 

Another peculiarity of this table-talk and way- 
side-talk of Jesus was its calmness. No one can 
look over these tea-table conversations without 
reaching the uncomfortable impression that this 
Man could hardly, eat a meal but some one would 
charge upon Him with some impertinent or savage 
question, seeking to catch Him in His talk. This 
seems true not only at Simon's house and the house 
of Zacchaeus and of Levi, but even in the special 
privacy of the loving home at Bethany. But He 
was never ruffled nor ever surprised into exagger- 
ation, or recrimination, or apology. Jesus never 
lost His balance. Both Macaulay and Holmes rec- 
ognized the danger of verbal and dialectical exag- 



32 



The Stars and the: Book. 



geration in the heat of quick speech — and from this 
danger neither of these wholly escaped; but this 
Speaker is always accurate, always judicial, always 
consistent. It was at the very hour when the peo- 
ple were showing Him the most honor and when 
they were the surest of the future success of His 
cause and of their own loyalty that He wept over 
Jerusalem and lamented the apostasy of the pop- 
ulace. It was at the supper-table, just after He 
had foretold the immediate disaffection of all His 
favorite disciples, that He gave them His sweetest 
love-messages and most confidently spoke of their 
future greatness and heavenly honor. 

Many of the deepest and most impressive re- 
marks of Jesus were made at the tea-table. About 
one-third of all John's Gospel consists merely of a 
report of one of these table-talks, and the parable 
of the Great Supper and many more of His most 
beautiful parables were spoken while He was sit- 
ting at the supper-table. 

Our Autocrat said, "I talk half the time to find 
out my own thoughts, as a schoolboy turns out his 
pockets to see what is in them;" but not so this 
Man Wonderful. He never contradicted Himself, 
but was always consistent and perfect in the round- 
ness of His thought. A Chinese proverb has it that 



Jesus as a Conversationalist. 33 

an unlucky word dropped can not be dragged back 
by a coach and six horses; but never a word did 
this strange, simple Talker ever drop, in haste or 
excitement, to be regretted or modified. Can this 
be said of any other? 

Connected with this spontaneity, simplicity, so- 
briety, and consistency of utterance there was also 
a brilliancy never equaled. 

Both De Quincey and Madame de Stael used 
artificial stimulants to increase the sparkle of their 
imagination. He never seemed to feel the need of 
increased mental unction. If He ever had any blue 
Mondays or weary Saturdays, no one seemed to 
discover the fact. His thought was rapid, splendid, 
keen as a rapier. Aphorisms, like "Judge not, that 
ye be not judged," and a dozen more were thrown 
off as easily as dewdrops throw out the tints of 
heaven's rainbow. Maxims, like the Golden Rule 
and the Silver Rule were uttered naturally as the 
robin sings. Paradoxes, as "He that findeth his 
life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life shall 
find it," and beatitudes, which even to-day stir a 
man to his deepest thought, and innumerable 
parables (a style of speech which Strauss acknowl- 
edged Jesus Himself created) — all these dropped 
from His lips as easily as rain out of the sky. Such 
3 



34 



The Stars and the Book. 



speech seemed to have been no harder than breath- 
ing for Him; yet every sentence flashed like a dia- 
mond, and poured the white light of truth upon the 
subject on which He was conversing 

Follow Him in His walks by the wayside, and 
note His Socratic questioning and counter-question- 
ing, and you must acknowledge that here is repartee 
of the shrewdest and most brilliant kind. 

"What is prayer?" asks one, and He paints 
the picture of the Pharisee and the publican. "Who 
is my neighbor?" asks another, and He paints the 
picture of a man in trouble. Often we need to 
catch His accent or action to see how adequately 
His reply meets the question. "Show me the Fa- 
ther," says Philip. "Have / been so long time with 
you and hast thou not known Me, Philip?" "Good 
Master, what good thing shall I do that I may have 
eternal life?" "Why callest thou Me good?" No- 
tice how He calls attention to the motive of the 
questioner, and draws attention to Himself when 
this man asks concerning salvation. 

"What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" "How 
readest thou?" Can't you see His finger point to 
the phylactery bound on the man's arm containing 
Deuteronomy vi, 5, in sacred letters? The Jews 
were required to repeat that text every morning and 



Jesus as a Conversationalist. 35 

evening. They were better acquainted with that text 
than with almost any other in the Old Testament. 
The answer to this lawyer who was "tempting" 
Him was as brilliant as that of Charles Sumner 
to the Lord Chief Justice in Westminster Hall, 
during the trial of an important case, which seemed 
without precedent. "Can you inform me," said 
the great English jurist, "whether any American 
decision has been given upon the point in ques- 
tion?" "No, Your Lordship," said the young Amer- 
ican, "but this point has been decided in Your Lord- 
ship's own court," in such a case, giving him the 
citation. That answer made Charles Sumner famous 
throughout the entire kingdom; but this is almost 
an exact parallel. "How readest thou?" Do not 
ask me so easy a question. You can answer it your- 
self. You have been carrying the answer around 
with you all your life, and have been shouting it on 
the street-corners twice every day. "How readest 
thou?" Do you wonder that this smart "tempter" 
went away shamefaced? 

Hear in the streets the whispers of the jealous 
Pharisees, "This fellow casteth out devils by Beelze- 
bub, the prince of devils." "And Jesus knew their 
thoughts, and said : By whom, then, do your sons 
cast them out?" This was not an acknowledgment 



36 



The: Stars and the; Book. 



of the validity of the Jewish exorcists, as has so often 
been said by commentators who should have known 
better. It is the shrewdest kind of argumentum ad 
hominem. No one could deny that the power shown 
by Jesus was incomparably greater than that 
exhibited by any other. But, if so, what then? Do 
these others do their works by the power of Jehovah 
and Jesus by the power of Beelzebub? If you say 
that, you are affirming that Satan is stronger than 
God. And they slunk away, not daring to answer 
His question. 

See that Syrophenician woman trying to get to 
Jesus as He sits at the table. The disciples try to 
drive her away. "Why will these heathen dogs tor- 
ment us by their cries? Our Messiah ought not to 
be troubled by them. They are not worth healing." 
But now she has reached the table and has kneeled 
at Jesus' feet and is sobbing, "Have mercy on me, O 
Lord." What will Jesus do? Will He sympathize 
with this universal Jewish aversion to these Gentile 
"dogs ?" It seems so. "It is not proper to take the 
children's bread and throw it to the dogs." Ah! 
that is what Peter thought. But is it possible that 
Jesus (even as a test of faith) could ever have called 
any poor, sorrowing woman a dog? No. It is a 
shame to the commentators that they have always 



Jesus as a Conversationalist. 37 

believed this. It is not a test of faith to call a woman 
a dog. Jesus never did it. He was doubtless re- 
buking the disciples for having done it. He was 
teaching them a lesson. What He said to the woman 
was for their ears. "It is not proper to give the 
children's bread to dogs." Ah! then, Jesus will 
never do it. That is absolutely certain. See Peter 
and the others nod their heads approvingly. It is 
settled then. If it is not a thing proper and right 
to be done, Jesus can never do it. Even if His heart 
prompted Him to do it, He would not, He could not. 
But what is He doing? Look, Peter, and wonder, 
for the happy heathen mother is receiving not a 
crumb simply, but the whole loaf from the Divine, 
loving hand of the world's Christ. What does that 
mean ? It is a proof as clear as language and logic 
can make it, that this poor heathen worshiper of 
Beelzebub was not a dog, but a child. The answer 
to the disciples' whispered affront to one whose re- 
ligion was less pure than their own was given on the 
moment, but it was in the form of a blessed syllo- 
gism which the world needs yet to ponder with at- 
tention. 

Even in the instances given we have caught sight 
of a keenness of repartee which is almost wit. We 
would call such a man to-day keen-witted. There 



38 



The Stars and the: Book. 



was a cleverness, an acuteness, a point, a tooth to 
His words which like a knife took off the cuticle of 
His adversaries and turned the laugh of the crowd 
upon them. Fancy the faces on the outskirts of the 
crowd when He is interrogated by the chuckling law- 
yers about paying taxes to Caesar. How sure the 
questioners are that they have Him now! If He 
says "No," He will lose all His influence with the 
patriotic party ; if He says "Yes," He will be guilty 
of high treason. To lose His popularity or lose His 
head, that is the dilemma. Yet there is no moment 
of hesitancy. Caesar's stamp is on the coin ; give to 
Caesar what belongs to him. God's stamp is on the 
man, give to God what belongs to Him. God's coin 
may fall in the gutter, but the stamp of its creator 
and rightful owner is still upon it. Give God His 
own. How swift and virile and unexpected is this 
home thrust upon these Pharisaic "spies" who had 
set themselves so high above the publicans and sin- 
ners of earth! 

And again when they rush pellmell into His 
presence with the sinful woman whom He could not 
condemn without usurping the rights of the civil 
authorities and whom He must condemn or else 
place Himself in opposition to Moses. How quickly 
comes the answer, and how quickly afterwards does 



Jesus as a Conversationalist. 39 

the grinning, mocking crowd flinch and shy and 
shuffle away, while the outsiders at the window 
laugh them to scorn because of their defeat. 

The common people, who were no friends of the 
pompous scribes and complacent Pharisees must 
have often been convulsed with amusement at the 
way their crafty traps were avoided and at the brave 
satire with which He characterized them. Every 
word of Jesus brings before the mind a picture vivid 
as any by Rembrandt. These learned, but unscrupu- 
lous theologians are blind leaders of the blind. 
Can you not see their empty eye-sockets ? They are 
white- washed grave stones. Can you not see the 
cemetery which is their rightful home? They are 
wolves in sheep's clothing. Can you not see the 
wolf's curious nose and ravenous fang peering out 
from beneath the mask of lamblike innocence ? 

Here is a man, a member of the Church. He 
makes long prayers. Yes, he does that, and de- 
vours widows' houses, too. Think of that mouth- 
ful ! See the man trying to pray while the widow's 
cottage is between his teeth. What a lunch to take 
on the street corner, between his prayers ! 

Here is one of the gossips of the town — a man 
of course. He is the neighborhood faultfinder. He 
seems to believe that the chief end of man is to 



4Q 



The Stars and the: Book. 



glorify himself and criticise his neighbors. (It is 
rumored that some of his relatives are living yet.) 
And Jesus looks at him and says, "He is like a man 
trying to get a mote out of the eye of a neighbor 
while a beam is in his own eye." A splinter in the 
eye is bad enough, but this man has been wounded 
with a stick of timber, such as Odysseus thrust into 
the one eye of Polyphemus, the giant Cyclops ; and 
yet, forgetting his own infirmity and his own sad 
need of immediate surgical assistance, he uses the 
other eye — which must have been also sympathet- 
ically afflicted — in spying upon and ridiculing his 
neighbor because a piece of shaving or speck of 
dust has gotten into one of his eyes. Nothing in 
Hogarth is better than that. It ought to be painted. 

Here is another hyper-scrupulous Pharisee; a 
man so careful in his observance of all the custom- 
ary forms of religion, that he would not eat any 
thing, even the commonest herb, or even take a dose 
of medicine without being sure the priest and the 
temple had the legal tithe ; and yet one who daily 
eateth the bread of iniquity forgetting "righteous- 
ness and mercy and faithfulness." And Jesus looks 
at him and says : "He is like a man drinking water 
who would strain out the gnat and swallow the 
camel." What's that ? A gnat ? I would choke on 



Jesus as a Conversationalist. 41 



that. How could I swallow such a horrible thing? 
But — but — never mind the camel. Down with it! 
How unexpected that is ! 

It is easy to see how in company with congenial 
friends, this rich imagery., this quaint humor would 
shine and glow in lively pleasantry of the sweetest, 
holiest kind. It is true that we never read in the 
Bible that Jesus smiled; but His words laugh re- 
peatedly. He was no misanthrope or cynic. He 
who came talking sunbeams no doubt came smiling 
as the sunshine, and having once caught the idea no 
one can examine the conversations of Jesus without 
being impressed by the evidences everywhere of a 
mellow, twinkling, sparkling, sometimes almost daz- 
zling, humor. Everywhere there is a cheery warmth 
of fancy, bright flashes of the imagination, happy 
sallies and plays on words, while many of the para- 
bles read like sprightly conundrums. I do not 
wonder the children loved Jesus, climbed into his 
arms and followed Him into the temple ; I only won- 
der we did not see sooner that this friend of the chil- 
dren, this welcome guest at feasts and weddings, 
possessed some such rich talent as this. Indeed, no 
man could perfectly represent humanity without it. 

One other characteristic of this marvelous talker 



42 



The Stars and the; Book. 



ought to be mentioned — his chaste and powerful 
poetic imagination. He is a poet, whether he ever 
writes a rhythmic verse or not, who has such insight 
into the meaning and beauty of the commonplace, 
and such sympathy with Nature and all humanity 
as Jesus had. Only a born poet could have seen in 
Nature what He saw. Listen! As He talks you 
hear the wind blow, and the sound of the storm, 
and the bleat of the lost lamb on the mountain. 
Listen ! He is talking to the disciples now and His 
hands are full of lilies, and He says "The flowers 
have no spinning wheels or looms and yet King 
Solomon was not so gloriously dressed in his robes 
of State, woven by royal maidens, as are these" — 
and as He speaks I can not help seeing His mother's 
spindle and distaff and loom and know that these 
have been chosen by Him for a text from which to 
teach heavenly lessons. / hope his mother knew it. 

What a talker! How exhilarating, how stimu- 
lating, how beautiful are His words ! The lake, the 
wood, the growing corn, the summer day, the sky 
of evening, the birds chirping so cheerily, though 
without barns or granaries, these all talked to Him ; 
and He out of this bright world talked the sunshine 
and the song of the birds into men's souls. Jesus 



Jdsus as a Conversationalist. 43 

was a poet. His talk was poetry. His life was a 
poem. He talked both with His lips and with His 
life, and finally lay down to sleep on the rough 
bed made from one of the trees He loved so well, 
in whose very branches the birds may have sung 
to Him, and from that Tree of Life He still talks 
with men, and hearts yet burn at His words. 



III. 



THE BUILDER OF CHRISTIANITY. 
"Is not this the carpenter?" — Mark vi, 2. 

These are the words of the men of Nazareth, 
astonished at the wisdom and the mighty works of 
Jesus. Whence hath this village artisan, who has 
never learned even of the scribes, his unequaled 
wisdom ? Whence hath this man, not even ordained 
by the temple priests, His power over men and na- 
ture, a power which can command even disease and 
death? The question was pertinent then and is to- 
day. It is an axiom of reason that every effect 
must have an adequate cause. But what is the ade- 
quate cause behind these mighty works ? 

Who is this "carpenter" who has built Chris- 
tianity? This is the question which we consider 
this morning. I do not intend to go to the Bible 
for the answer. The Bible has an answer. It tells 
us that He Himself was the miracle. What He did 
was the natural outpouring of His supernatural be- 
ing. It tells us that the stars were interested in His 

44 



The Builder of Christianity. 45 

birth; the students of the skies saw strange sights 
that night; the splendid Oriental heavens burst into 
song, and even shepherds could see angels and hear 
celestial music. Such was His birth, according to 
the Bible. And this man who was born miracu- 
lously, lived miraculously, and having died and lain 
in the grave "three days," on the first Easter morn- 
ing, as the sun was about to rise, as the world was 
getting ready for a new dawn, He came forth from 
the sealed tomb — as if He were the very monarch 
of Time and Life — bringing a radiant surprise into 
the hearts of men and a new morning to the world. 
That is the Bible story. The apostles believed it. 
Those believe it now who do not think they know 
more than the apostles knew about it. 

Yet for the present argument we appeal only to 
the facts every one; even the enemies of Jesus, admits. 

The major premise of our argument is this: 
Christianity is a fact. No one will deny that. Fifty 
thousand church bells ring out this truth every 
Lord's day morning; five hundred million adher- 
ents to Christ in every land emphasize it. This 
Christian commonwealth is not a dream like Plato's 
republic or Sir Thomas More's Utopia; it is a 
fact. Our first proposition then is simple. The 
building is majestic ; it must have had a builder. 



4 6 



Ths Stars and the Book. 



Consider the beauty, grandeur, stability of this 
Christian temple. Its foundation pillars were laid 
in the Augustan age. That age was famous for 
its architecture, yet her finest structures are in ruins, 
while this temple remains new and strong as if it 
were to endure forever. Within its courts meet to- 
gether as brothers men of every land and every lan- 
guage. Here may be found the grandest hymns, 
the choicest art, the noblest literature on the planet. 
Her walls encircle all the chief centers of civiliza- 
tion and of learning in every land. Her columns 
rest upon every continent and upon almost every 
island of the sea as immovably as if grounded upon 
some Rock of Ages. Who is the builder of this 
majestic temple? He who built it seems to have 
had control of the forces of history. Indeed it was 
Renan who acknowledged: "All history is incom- 
prehensible without Him." Who is this carpenter 
who has built this house of mercy called the Chris- 
tian Church, and has built it as if for eternity? Its 
shadow falls like a radiance upon the best things 
and the sweetest things of earth. Who built it? 
He who was the builder must have been a colossal 
man, if he were a man. 

At the very beginning of this discussion one 
thing at least may be settled. Christianity is not ex- 



The; Builder of Christianity. 47 

plained by crying, Fiction, Legend, Myth. You 
may tell me that these words of Jesus, these in- 
comparable pearls of wisdom, are forgeries. You 
may tell me that the history of His life, even the his- 
tory of Bethlehem and Gethsemane and Calvary and 
Joseph's Tomb are legends; you may tell me that 
even this face shining upon us from the Gospels, 
a face so pure that the world still blushes as it looks 
upon it, is a creation of the imagination; but this 
does not explain the fact that there is a Christian 
Church. 

It would seem miracle enough to invent such a 
character as this of Christ revealed in the Gospels; 
to paint this face which looks out upon the world 
like the face of a seraph from a herd of swine (and 
the more the artists and the farther removed from 
any original, the greater the miracle) ; but you are 
going too far when you say this imaginary hero 
built Christianity. You might as well say that 
Hamlet built the royal palace in Copenhagen, or 
Uncle Tom liberated the slaves. 

It would be a miracle, indeed, if men like 
these, Matthew the publican, for example, so de- 
void of all patriotism that he could act as tax col- 
lector from his own people, taking office under the 
heathen tyrants, a man whose word could not be 



4 8 



The Stars and the Book. 



received under oath in the courts of that day — it 
would seem almost a miracle if such a man as he 
could originate this ideal personality, whose life 
even to-day skeptics acknowledge to be the perfect 
model of a perfect man, stainless, pure, imperial, 
divine, — and invent words for his lips which for 
twenty centuries have shone like apples of gold in 
pictures of silver. 

It would be miracle enough if men like 
Peter, a blustering, swearing sailor, and James and 
John, poor illiterate fishermen, narrow and intol- 
erant and sinful, according even to the report of 
their best friends — that these men with the smell 
of the bait on their hands, could invent such a char- 
acter as this of Jesus — this absolutely unique pattern 
of manhood — putting into His lips words that have 
made Him the teacher of philosophers, and imagin- 
ing for Him answers to the most profound ques- 
tions of ethics and theology, which are still the 
most satisfactory known to twentieth-century schol- 
arship. This would be hard enough to believe, but 
one is going too far when he says it was this "man 
of the imagination" who built Christianity and then 
created out of the very men who lied this imagin- 
ary hero into existence, apostles and saints and 
martyrs, and is yet able — this same man of the im- 



The: Builder of Christianity. 49 

agination — even to-day, to ennoble and transform 
mean men into saints and small men into men of 
might, so that, even according to the acknowledg- 
ment of pronounced skeptics, the world's future 
depends on the way humanity continues to be 
molded by this Christ of the Gospels! 

" The world sits at the feet of Christ 
Unknowing, blind, and unconsoled ; 
It yet shall touch His garment's fold 
And feel the Heavenly Alchemist 
Transform its very dust to gold." 

That is the hope of the world to-day, even His 
enemies being the judges. Now it is miracle 
enough to say that the Jesus of the Gospels is a 
man of the imagination, but you go too far when 
you affirm that this fictitious hero could transform 
even the men who invented Him into mighty forces 
of holiness, and that through these agents this same 
imaginary being could pour "a tide of youth and 
rapture" into the "wasted veins" of humanity and 
build Christianity — the religion of the Sunrise and 
the Spring. Fictitious heroes are not good carpen- 
ters. Even the greatest creations of Shakespeare 
carry no hammers. He who built this majestic 
Christian cathedral must have had a mighty mind 
4 



50 The; Stars and the Book. 



and a strong- arm, for it seems built of eternal gran- 
ite, not of such stuff as dreams are made of. 

Our second proposition is equally simple with 
the first. Jesus, the only assigned personal builder 
of this world's wonder, as a man only, was inade- 
quate to the task. 

The general conditions of the life and times of 
Jesus are denied by no scholar. The heathen testi- 
monies of His character and His work begin within 
forty-five years of His death, while His home and 
country and age are opened to our view by many 
contemporary writers. We know almost as much 
about the environment of this Man of Nazareth as 
about the environment of George Washington. If 
Jesus, the human carpenter, built Christianity, we 
want to ask where He was born, who were His allies, 
what were His advantages. For if this were not a 
supernatural work by a supernatural character, it 
was a natural work which is to be accounted for by 
natural laws and natural surroundings. Perhaps, 
as some have intimated, He was simply a growth 
from the soil, the natural product of His country 
and home, the genius of His time incarnate. 

L,et us look at His country and home. The 
country in which He lived was about one-fourth the 
size of the State of Illinois. He never went 



The; Builder of Christianity. 51 

out of it, except for a brief period as a 
babe. Plato sought the cosmopolitan spirit in 
foreign lands. Jesus had none of the cul- 
ture and breadth obtained by travel. The 
man who crosses his State at the narrowest breadth 
has gone farther in a night than Jesus ever traveled 
in His life. And do you realize how destitute was 
His native country of all that we call civilizing and 
refining influences? Look out upon it. Fields in 
which the farmer uses no drill or reaper or mower 
or thresher, not even a scythe; but plows the earth 
with a crooked stick, reaps the grain with a sickle 
or pulls it up by the roots, threshes it with a flail, 
winnows it by tossing it in the air, and then, as 
his only granary, buries it in the ground. Towns 
like Nazareth, with filthy streets so narrow that two 
laden donkeys can scarcely pass each other — so nar- 
row that even in Jerusalem, the capital city, all 
vehicles were forbidden by law to run in the streets 
until evening after the travel had ceased — no elec- 
tric lights, no street lamps of any kind, only torches 
in the hands or lamps fastened to the sandals. No 
sidewalks, so that it is easy for any night traveler 
to fall into the ditch; no police, no sewers, but out- 
side of every large town some gehenna, where the 
rubbish and filth are burned. The town itself, only 



52 



The Stars and the: Book. 



a collection of one-story houses of mud or rough 
stones or sunburned brick, easily washed or blown 
away. 

And in one of these He lived, this man whom 
even the modern Voltaire has declared to be the 
"creator of civilization !" Enter His home. We 
know just the kind of a home it was. It was no 
mansion. It was scarcely equal to the adobes of 
the Pueblo Indians — a little, low, one-story cabin, 
with mud floor and straw roof, parlor, sitting-room, 
bedroom, stable all in one. There was no window, 
no fireplace or stove or chimney — only three or 
four stones laid close together — no bed, only a mat 
on the floor. The furniture was scanty; a half 
dozen copper and clay vessels, a chest, perhaps a 
loom, a bread basket, a broom, two stones used in 
grinding corn, a bushel, and a lamp; "the lamp," 
the Greek says, for in poor homes such as Jesus 
knew, they had but one. The "bushel" covered the 
lamp in the daytime and acted as lamp-stand at 
night. The food was meager; no knives and forks 
at the table; even at the Last Supper, the disciples 
with their fingers dipped the bread into the common 
sop. Such was His home! What would you ex- 
pect as the natural outcome of such an environ- 
ment — a world Teacher "never to be surpassed?" 



" The Builder of Christianity. 53 

Remember, Nazareth was no Athens. It had no 
art galleries, no libraries, no universities or acade- 
mies, no school at all. In the synagogue or at home 
the children were taught to read and write and 
probably to cipher, and in pious homes were taught 
the Scriptures. But there was no public school in 
Nazareth, not even a primary school until two gen- 
erations after the birth of Jesus. Even if there had 
been a rabbinical school, with its teaching that "if 
a Gentile fall into the sea a Jew must not pull him 
out ; thou shalt not be guilty of thy neighbor's blood, 
but a Gentile is not thy neighbor," would it have 
been a good preparation for the Founder of a world 
religion? Was Palestine accustomed to turn out 
such carpenters? Was this man the natural prod- 
uct of the soil? "A morsel of bread from a Sa- 
maritan is as swine's flesh," says the Talmud; yet 
He talked with the woman of Samaria, giving her 
the first revelation of His Messiahship, and chose 
a Samaritan as His ideal of brotherhood! 

Macaulay says the age forms the man, but after 
carefullest study I almost believe no human influence 
but would have hindered the growth of this man were 
He a man only. Some one may point as an exception 
to this, to his pious relatives, but if He were a man 
only His father was weak and foolish, and the less 



54 



The Stars and the Book. 



said about His mother the better. Nay, if a man 
only, then He was not even a good man, for He 
claimed to forgive sin and to work miracles, to give 
away places in heaven, and to be God's represent- 
ative on the earth. To be sure, even the skeptics de- 
clare that He was the ideal of religion and humility, 
but it is a curious thing that this most humble and 
pious man never repented of sin, never acknowl- 
edged that he could possibly be wrong, and made 
Himself the center of all His teaching. If He were 
only a man, then was He a false man, deceiver or 
deceived. Could a false man have built Christian- 
ity? Why, as Carlyle somewhere says, a false man 
can not even build a good house, for presently the 
house he pretends to build tumbles into a rubbish 
heap. 

Let us ask again, was Palestine accustomed to 
turn out such carpenters? We have a description 
of His neighbors from men who knew them well. 
Tacitus speaks of them as "the very scum of slav- 
ery," and Cicero said, "These natives of Syria are 
born only to be slaves." They were all under the 
yoke — Jesus and all. But the Galileans were de- 
spised even by their countrymen of Judea, as bigoted 
and ignorant and bloody. Even in Jerusalem, as 
we know from contemporaneous sources, these 



The Builder of Christianity. 55 

neighbors and companions of Jesus were called 
"Galilean blockheads." 

Who is this man, this Galilean, who grows up 
in such a home, among such influences, and comes 
forth, not a Galilean, not a Jew, not an Oriental, but 
the Man, Son of Humanity and Brother of the race 
— comes forth to be the teacher of nations and to 
originate new standards of culture? Who is this 
who claimed to be the Son of God and the Savior 
of men, and of whom even the skeptics acknowl- 
edge, "If ever the Divine did appear upon earth it 
was in His person ?" If I call Him God to-day, it is 
not because of any cunning application of Greek 
syntax or by a manipulation of so-called proof texts, 
but because the miracle of His character and life 
and power, even in death — and after it — compels the 
same cry that came from the lips of those who knew 
Him best, "My Lord and my God !" The question 
must be answered. He asks it to-day as in the olden 
times, "Who do men say that I am?" Who is 
this Jesus of the crystal heart, who is not a captain, 
not a priest, not a rabbi, only a carpenter — but the 
builder of Christianity? 

The builder of Christianity, how much that 
means ! No common carpenter could rear this tem- 
ple. Its pillars, the Bible and the human conscience ; 



56 



The: Stars and the Book. 



its foundation, the stone rolled from an empty 
grave; its roof high as heaven, brilliant with the 
stars of eternity. A man only build this temple? 
What a carpenter He must have been ! See Him 
yonder — that man with rough hands, dreaming as 
He works. What is it this young man proposes to 
do? Ah, a gigantic dream is in His breast. Lis- 
ten! He stands at the door of His humble work- 
shop, brushing the shavings from His hair as, look- 
ing towards the setting sun, He dreams a dream of 
power. What is it ? Does He hope to be a master 
carpenter ? Does He hope to study in the school of 
Jerusalem and become a rabbi some day? Or does 
He dare to dream that He may become ruler of the 
synagogue, or possibly high priest? Foolish boy! 
He has no teacher, no great friends, no money. It 
can not be. 

Still he dreams — this carpenter. It is a dream 
of world conquest. He is to be the greatest captain 
of Israel, who shall conquer the earth, command- 
ing more powerful armies than Alexander the Great. 
Insane ambition! Why, this youth has not even a 
sword ! 

Hark ! "All the future is mine. A cup of cold 
water offered to me will make the giver famous to 
the end of the world. Abraham was great, and 



The: Builder of Christianity. 57 

Moses and David and Solomon, but I shall be 
greater. The day of my birth will become a festive 
day the world over, so that all historic epochs will 
be dated from it. Thousands and millions shall 
gather every week to speak of Me, Jesus of Naza- 
reth, and give Me worship as to Jehovah Himself." 
Madness! Have you ever heard the ravings of a 
maniac? This young man ought not to be allowed 
at liberty; do you not say so? 

He goes forth, this carpenter, speaks to some 
Jewish fishermen, "Galilean blockheads," as they 
are called, and says, "Follow Me," and, strangely 
enough, they do follow, and would lay down their 
lives for His sake, and in following Him become 
new men in character and power. The crowds seek 
Him as if He carries the very bread of life. He 
speaks of God as Father until men weep and whis- 
per, "This is the vision of God that I craved, not 
knowing what I craved." He speaks of man as 
brother, and man begins to sacrifice for man as 
never before. He speaks of immortality and vic- 
tory over death, and lo ! life gains new charm and 
value. As He speaks of sin, a new holiness 
enters the earth ; as he speaks of duty, a new cour- 
age fills men's souls; as He speaks of man's des- 



The Stars and the Book. 



tiny, the horizons of the planet widen until a new 
earth comes in sight and a new heaven. 

But three years pass, three brief, swift years. 
He is hunted as a criminal, seized, hung as a laugh- 
ing stock on the cross. 

Ah ! the dream was beautiful, so beautiful the 
world might well have rejoiced to live by it; this 
dream of love to God and love to man ; this dream 
of sins forgiven and a world redeemed, of a new 
heart and eternal blessedness ; but it is only a dream. 
The bubble is burst ; the dream is ended, a Galilean 
on the cross, a dead man on the gallows — that is 
the end of it all ! 

What? Do you tell me that dead man has a 
kingdom ? That He is a leader of armies ; a greater 
conquerer than Alexander ; a teacher of nations more 
successful than Socrates ; His pupils more celebrated 
than the greatest prophets; His birthday honored 
even by infidels, as the birthday of modern civiliza- 
tion and thought? What? Do you mean to tell 
me that this dream has crystallized into reality, and 
that the Carpenter of Nazareth has built a Church, a 
divine temple, in which for nineteen centuries He 
has been directing the destinies of men ? 

Then indeed may we whisper with awed lips: 
Surely there is some great conspiracy here; this 



The; Builder of* Christianity. 59 

man must have been in league with the powers that 
make history and created human nature; the gov- 
ernment is on His shoulder ; the universe is on His 
side. 

Who is this carpenter who could dream this 
dream of infinite love and have it come true; who 
could make plans for future millenniums as if for 
to-morrow, and carry out His plans; who never 
wrote a line, but whose name fills all libraries ; who 
never went to college, but who in three years taught 
the world more than all His predecessors for three 
thousand years and all His successors for two thou- 
sand years, even His enemies being the judges? 
Who is this out of whose life has flowed the Gulf 
Stream of history, changing the moral and religious 
temperature of the planet, warming every heart and 
nation it has touched? Who is this carpenter who 
has built for Himself a sacred temple out of the 
broken fragments of a ruined humanity? Is it not 
the same divine Carpenter, the almighty Builder of 
the Universe, who formed the vault of the sky and 
the dome of the human mind, who having built the 
Christian Church, will yet build mansions in heaven 
for those who trust Him? 



THE CROSS. 

"Having made peace through the blood of his cross." 
— Col. i, 20. Come, take up the cross and follow 
me." — Mark x, 21. 

The: cross was the gallows of the ancient world. 
It was a strange symbol for a conquering religion — 
as strange as if the. United States should have 
chosen the whipping-post or gibbet instead of the 
eagle — but it was a symbol of Christ's own choos- 
ing. The Gospel of Jesus is emphatically the Gos- 
pel of the cross. Do we realize how old the symbol 
of the cross is? It was not invented yesterday. 
The lamb of God was slain before the foundation of 
the world (Rev. xiii, 8) and the cross as a religious 
symbol seems almost as old as the race. 

There is an ancient legend that the center post 
which upheld the roof of Noah's ark, that "great 
vessel of salvation," was cross-shaped and grew 
from a seed which Adam carried with him out of 
Paradise, a seed from the Tree of Life. It was 
60 



The Cross. 



61 



from a branch of this same tree that Hiram of Tyre 
cut the great cross-shaped beam which he sent to 
Solomon to be the central support of the temple, 
but which the builders rejected, and not finding any 
place where it would fit cast it outside the city walls. 
There it lay untouched through the centuries until 
in the haste of the crucifixion cruel hands seized 
it and nailed Jesus upon it. 

The cross has always had a mysterious signifi- 
cance. It would almost seem as if the human soul 
was built to expect something from this strange and 
mystic sign. Did you ever visit the cliff dwellings 
of Southern Colorado ? If so you have noticed the 
constant use of the cross in their constructions, evi- 
dently with some religious meaning attached to it. 
When the Spaniards came to Peru and Mexico they 
found the Incas and Aztecs reverencing the cross 
and saying that they had received this symbol from 
an earlier civilization. In a ruined city of Central 
America, a city which was covered with forests 
when this new world was discovered, an altar has 
recently been uncovered on which is sculptured a 
cross before which a worshiper is represented bring- 
ing offerings. In ancient India, Phoenicia, Babylon, 
Egypt, everywhere, we find the cross receiving 
peculiar honor millenniums before the Christian era. 



62 



The Stars and the: Book. 



And what meaning did these widely separated 
races and civilizations attach to this symbol? Ah! 
the answer to that question is even more astonishing. 
The very soldiers who crucified our Lord would 
place, after a battle, the Greek Theta, denoting 
death, before the names of those killed, and the 
Greek Tau (cross), denoting life, before the names 
of those who yet lived. So among the Hebrews, it 
was the cross marked upon the forehead which 
saved the godly inhabitants of Jerusalem from the 
destroying angel (Ez. ix, 4) ; the spit on which the 
Jews roasted the lamb of the Passover was cross- 
shaped and the blood struck on the lintel and door 
posts of the houses in Egypt formed the outline of a 
cross. So among the Druids this strange symbol 
represented "life," or the way of life. In Egypt 
it had the same meaning, and on the famous Rosetta 
stone it is this very hieroglyphic cross which is em- 
ployed by the sculptor, two centuries B. C., as ex- 
actly equivalent to the Greek word in the parallel 
column "immortality." That was the translation of 
this mystic sacred sign even then, and so untold 
ages before this when the prehistoric peoples of 
North Italy slept in death they put upon their 
funeral urns this same protective, triumphing sym- 
bol. Strange, impressive, universal, world-wide 



i 



The Cross. 



63 



symbol of something 1 never realized until Jesus 
Christ brought life and immortality to light, com- 
ing forth from the grave on the resurrection morn- 
ing, as pictured in the Catacombs, bearing His cross 
upon His shoulder in triumph. 

The cross as the sign of life seems to be al- 
most as old as the race. And this prin- 
ciple of vicarious sacrifice for which the cross 
of Christ stands is graven deep in all na- 
ture. Some one has wisely said, "We are all the 
living children of a world that has died for us." 
So the earth itself only lives because of the life 
which the sun gives it; and astronomers are now 
engaged in calculating how much longer the sun 
can continue thus to pour out its strength before it 
too will hang dead, its life sacrificed for others. 

The principle of the cross is also cut deep into hu- 
man nature. The beasts, as Walt Whitman says, 
never lie awake nights moaning over their sins and 
looking up above the stars for forgiveness. But man 
wherever you find him — however far back towards 
the birthday of the race, however low down in the 
scale of civilization — may be seen speaking into the 
unseen, whispering prayers for pardon and bringing 
sacrifices of atonement. Man's eyes have always 
naturally opened upward. He has never believed 



6 4 



The: Stars and the Book. 



that his only environment was of the earth, earthy. 
And it is a solemn and suggestive fact that man has 
always sought to open correspondence with that 
unseen world behind the stars by bringing a lamb 
of sacrifice in his hand. It seems 3s if the human 
soul was built to need this. Nature, when it pro- 
duced this curious religious machine which we call 
the human heart and conscience, so built it that it 
naturally works in this way; feeling after God and 
expecting an answer, though knowing itself degen- 
erate. 

The last point is especially remarkable since 
there is no such instinct in any other creature. A 
degenerate animal never seeks to regain its lost 
powers and is never able to do so. When an animal 
"misses the mark" he has missed it forever. He 
can never recover himself. The barnacle ceased to 
use its powers of sight and locomotion and lost 
them — lost even the power to carry food to the 
mouth and finally lost the mouth itself, and lost 
these organs and powers forever. The whale was 
once a true quadruped, but it took to the easy, self- 
ish life of the sea and sank in the scale. There is 
no instance known in the animal world of lost 
powers regained; of recovery after the creature de- 
teriorates. But man has ever felt, as if by instinct, 



This Cross. 



65 



that though he was out of harmony with himself 
and the universe, and though he had sadly deterio- 
rated, having lost even since childhood spiritual sen- 
sitiveness and strength, yet through the innocent 
blood of the sacrifice which he brought in his hand, 
he might reach a reconciliation (at-one-ment) with 
the unseen Ruler above him and the unseen monitor 
within him. 

Yet can anybody now believe that pardon of sin 
ever came or could come through the death of an 
animal ? That was simply the picture lesson, the type, 
the shadow of something so great that no human 
speech could utter it. For untold millenniums the 
sacrificial lamb heralded something to come. All 
systems of ancient sacrifices, heathen as well as 
Hebrew, received their interpretation when the spot- 
less Lamb of God was slain. The law was the 
world's schoolmaster to bring it to Christ. 

I do not mean that it was a prophecy. It was 
better than a prophecy. It was the expression of an 
eternal principle of truth placed in man's mind by 
the builder of man's mind, a principle which sprang 
out of God's own heart and which He sought to 
plant in man's heart; viz., that life (physical, mental, 
spiritual, eternal,) can come only through the sacri- 
fice of life ; that he who would save others can not 
5 



66 



The; Stars and the: Book. 



save himself; that it is divine to pour out one's life 
to strengthen and save the weak and the sinful. 

Sin! Sin! Sin! Help! Help! Help! This 
is the cry of humanity from its best representatives. 
The Atonement was God's answer to this cry, and 
like all God's answers it was ready before the cry 
for help came. (Rev. xiii, 8.) The tragic fact of 
human sin and helplessness brought to light God's 
eternal plan for the recovery of the race. If there is 
no sin there is no need of a savior. If the sin is not 
appalling and deadly, there is no need of such a 
Savior. Any system which denies the "sin of the 
world" must also deny the "Lamb of God." The 
closer the prophets got to God the more they felt 
the abysmal fact of sin. Jesus saw more sin in the 
world than any one else. Every angry thought 
looked to Him like murder; every unclean thought 
an unspeakable crime. The cross shows what Jesus 
thought about sin. Sin is so deadly that even God 
could not bear it away from His beloved without 
the cross. Only thus could this leprosy be taken 
away and the springs of our being become purified. 

The Gospel of Jesus is the Gospel of the cross. 

The cross is the pole of the spiritual Cosmos. 
Cut the cross out of the Bible and it falls to pieces 
like any other old book. Cut the cross out of Chris- 



The Cross. 



67 



tianity and it becomes a superstition, a fable, a de- 
lusion, an hypocrisy. Cut the cross out of history 
and it becomes a locked labyrinth of horror and 
mystery without a key. 

What then is the Christian meaning- of "the 
cross ?" What do we mean by atonement and salva- 
tion "by the blood of the cross?" The cross is the 
symbol of life wrought through death ; of salvation 
wrought through self-forgetfulness and uttermost 
outpouring of self for the good of others. It was 
not Christ's broken body which was the real sacri- 
fice. The true sacrifice of God is a broken spirit. 
Jesus poured out His soul, unto death, for the good 
of others. I do not pretend to understand all the 
depth of meaning in that death on Calvary, when 
the divine sacrifice became sin for us. But one 
thing is certain; .that death was necessary. God 
would never have allowed it otherwise. It was not 
accidental, it was not superfluous, it behooved Him 
to suffer. I do not mean that it was necessary be- 
cause of a tangle in God's plan which it only could 
unravel. Humanity ought not to charge lack of 
foresight against the Omniscient, or lack of power 
against the Omnipotent. It was not necessary be- 
cause God's law was in danger or God's government 



68 



The: Stars and the; Book. 



would totter unless somebody suffered. The Atone- 
ment was not necessary for God (except as His 
own heart compelled it), but it was necessary for 
man because nothing short of this divine love-offer- 
ing could break down the barrier of man's guilt 
and lack of feeling and growing brutishness which 
separated him from the vision and likeness of God 
(i. e., salvation). 

The cross was the "divine heart-break" over 
human sin. The Atonement was not an arbi- 
trary scheme to meet an emergency; but the 
natural outpouring of God's eternal nature which 
meets a response in human nature, since humanity 
is kin to God. The necessity of the Atonement 
was not artificial, or perhaps even judicial ; it was a 
necessity of love since only thus a man such as I 
am — debased, ungrateful, sullen, rebellious — can be 
won to the new manhood revealed in Jesus. 

It was impossible without the lowering of all 
morals, for God to pardon rebellious and impenitent 
man without lifting him to a new spiritual character. 
It was absolutely necessary that a repentance ade- 
quate to the change of character be secured. The 
cross secured this. The death of Jesus was dy- 
namic. This was God's way of working in the sinful 
soul such a shame of sin, conviction of duty and 



The; Cross. 



69 



consciousness of God's uplifting presence as should 
revolutionize and transform the soul. 

I do not like the theories which seek to explain 
why just so many groans and so many spasms of 
pain came to Jesus on the cross as He tried to work 
out a "scheme" of atonement; to maKe the ever- 
loving Father willing to forgive sinners and the Al- 
mighty Lawgiver able to forgive. You can not ex- 
plain that agony in mathematical terms any more 
than you can the cry of the mother over her lost 
boy. It was not a balancing of accounts between 
God and man; much less between God and Satan. 
It was the heart-break of love over the erring child. 
I think of the Atonement as a fact so great and far- 
reaching that no human thought can compass it and 
no human language symbolize it, a fact eternal as 
the being of God, a, thought vast as the orbit of the 
divine love. 

That is the reason we have had so many theories 
of the atonement. When some great thinker has 
been able to see clearly a little fragment of that 
sublime circle of grace he has been able to establish 
a powerful theology. These concepts of the Atone- 
ment differ and none are adequate because each 
thinker sees so small a part of the "vision splendid" 
— and even what he sees blinds him with its glory 



7o 



The: Stars and the Book. 



and he comes down from his contemplation of this 
highest revelation of Deity crying, "Unspeakable, 
unspeakable!" Human language even at its best 
is too poor, too humanly imperfect, to express com- 
pletely even our best feelings and conceptions, much 
less this deepest revelation of the Infinite mind. 
Every word is a metaphor and no words can ade- 
quately explain the august and divine work which 
Christ did on the cross. 

So even the inspired writers when they sought 
to describe and explain the mystery of redemption 
through the cross (which even the angels could not 
understand fully) piled phrase on phrase and meta- 
phor on metaphor in a vain attempt (through this 
necessarily imperfect medium of human speech) to 
utter the fullness of meaning in this unspeakable 
tragedy of the cross. I do not suppose it was ever 
intended by those inspired writers that these vivid 
pictures of man's uttermost sin and helplessness and 
Christ's uttermost ability to help through the cross, 
should be treated as if they were university defini- 
tions of the Atonement or legal papers explaining 
the method of it. But they have been so under- 
stood. It is through an undue emphasis of some of 
these apostolic pictures (which do express truth; 
but were never meant to be scholastic formularies 



The: Cross. 



7i 



of a theory) that the various "schemes" of the 
atonement have arisen. 

Man is a Samson, bound in sin grinding in the 
prison house; but Christ on the cross is his Savior 
and deliverer. Man has been captured by that arch 
robber, sin, but Christ can pay the ransom and pur- 
chase his redemption. Man is a child justly deserv- 
ing the father's anger; but Jesus propitiates the 
Father and brings the wanderer home. Man is in 
his grave, dead in trespasses and sins, putrifying as 
Lazarus was, but Jesus from His cross can cry 
"Come forth," and the dead will live. Man is starv- 
ing, but Jesus is the bread of life. Man is dying of 
leprosy, but Christ is the Heavenly Physician who 
can cure and wash away all the foulness, making 
him whiter than snow. Man is a rebel, justly con- 
demned to capital punishment, but Jesus is the suffi- 
cient Mediator. Man is a criminal and the law must 
be vindicated; but Jesus on the cross becomes his 
substitute bearing his sins in His own body on the 
tree. Man is a sinner, but Jesus on the cross is the 
scapegoat to bear away his iniquity or the sin-offer- 
ing accepted as its atonement. 

Such are some of the vivid pictorial illus- 
trations used in the New Testament to empha- 
size the need of the cross and its absolute suf- 



72 The Stars and the: Book. 

ficiency to help and save. But these word pic- 
tures have been metaphysically analyzed until 
they have often represented the Father as an- 
tagonistic, not only to man, but to his best beloved 
Son, or until Satan has been elevated as a rival of 
Deity; or God's law has been thought of as being 
above its author, and God has been represented as 
not really forgiving man his sins, but as exacting 
every ounce of the penalty, but exacting it from the 
person innocent of the crime. Such theories could 
not be true. They are due largely to a misunder- 
standing of the picturesque language used by Jesus 
and His apostles. 

In saying this there is no intention of speaking 
disrespectfully of the makers of these old theories. 
They were greater men than any who now criticise 
them — incomparably greater than those who' select 
one or two phrases which illustrate the moral in- 
fluence of Christ's death and therefore leap to the 
conclusion that this is all there was to it. No, 
there is a mystery here too deep for human thought 
to fathom, too deep for human speech to utter. The 
fact that these old theories have had such power 
shows that they are in touch with infinite truth. 
Even the worst theory of the atonement, when 
joined to reverent faith in Christ as a personal Sav- 



The; Cross. 



73 



ior, makes noble men. It was the distrine of the 
cross (sometimes in its crudest form) which, even 
its enemies being the judges, has "wrought the 
mightiest enterprises of Christian history, en- 
couraged the loftiest martyrdoms for humanity's 
uplift, and aroused the strongest, most original, and 
purest impulses of the human soul." Such is the 
acknowledgment which a leading representative of 
liberalism has recently made. But if that is true, 
unless God is dead or has nothing to do with the 
course of the world's history, the Infinite Will must 
have been behind this exaltation of the cross. 

The preaching of the cross may seem to some 
foolishness and to others a stone of stumbling; but 
to the man, helpless and dying and sick of sin, it has 
been proved historically to be the power of God 
unto salvation. The cross of Christ does break re- 
bellious hearts and work mighty transformations in 
the human soul. Tens of thousands in glory now 
were changed from proud, brutal, sensual, men into 
a gentle and Christlike manhood, where they could 
say in the language of that hymn which Matthew 
Arnold called the finest in the English language, 

" When I survey the wondrous cross 
On which the Prince of glory died, 
My richest gain I count but loss 
And pour contempt on all my pride." 



74 



The; Stars and the; Book. 



We can not explain the Atonement. To explain 
it would be to deny it. Everything that God does 
has in it the inexplicable. We can not understand 
even the "flower in the crannied wall," much less 
this scarlet flower of Paradise Regained. We can 
not explain one grain of sand on the sea shore; 
how then can we explain this corner-stone of the 
City of God? No theory can adequately measure 
the mighty fact which is divinely shadowed in all 
the theories and expressed to the heart of man by 
the thrilling heart pictures of sin and need and utter- 
most salvation which fill the New Testament. 

But one thing we can be sure of; these Bible 
writers tell us the truth, even if we have mis- 
understood them sometimes. The apostles were not 
mistaken when they made the cross the remedy for 
sin. There is no other. For whatever may be said 
of modern knowledge and ancient ignorance, it can 
hardly be doubted by any one who does not think of 
himself more highly than he ought to think, that 
the apostles knew more about the deep things of 
religion and had keener insight into the divine 
thought of redemption, than any one who has since 
spoken on the subject. 

Another thing we can be sure of. It was the 
author of a Father's heart who was the author of 



The; Cross. 



75 



the plan of redemption and therefore any theory of 
the atonement, any explanation of Scripture words 
or images, which contradicts God's justice or His 
Fatherly love, must be wrong. 

And of one other thing we may be sure — that the 
power of the cross lies in its ability now to change the 
personality of men. The atonement is not something 
outside of us which leaves ourselves unchanged. 
Redemption through the cross is worked within us. 
This is the way God can be just and yet the justifier 
of the ungodly — because, through the cross, he can 
transform the ungodly and turn sinners into saints. 
The cross — the principle of vicarious sacrifice — is a 
regenerative principle now. It purges the con- 
science, it leads to repentance, it breaks down re- 
bellion, it brings sublime aspirations, it changes per- 
sonality, it brings new powers of victory, it brings 
fellowship with God and fellowship with man. We 
conquer, we rise, we reach penitence and self-knowl- 
edge and self-victory by the way of the cross. The 
cross can so change the beast nature of the natural 
man that any man, the worst man, the most brutish 
man is made tender and loving and sympathetic and 
humble and pure when he lets the cross into his life 
as a ruling passion. 

What is the cross? How does it enter the 



7 6 



The; Stars and the; Book. 



human soul and set into action these new and pow- 
erful motives and affections ? The cross is the sym- 
bol of the heart-break of love for its beloved. Love 
is the saving thing. The root principle of the cross 
is to forget self to help others. It is love, self- 
forgetful love, and this alone, which is the regen- 
erative germ. The president of one of our largest 
American universities has recently said that he never 
knew a bad man saved from a bad life excepting as 
he was brought under the influence of some one who 
loved him, believed in him, and sorrowed with him, 
and thus made him come face to face with his evil 
self. Thus only can repentance, that standing mira- 
cle of earth, begin its mighty work in the human 
breast. 

One other thing we can be sure of. The heart- 
break of Jesus over men's sins in the effort to save 
men from their sins stands as the eternal example to 
us. When Jesus pictured Christians He pictured 
them always as crucified men and women; having 
the cross implanted in their very being. In the de- 
gree one has the Christ spirit, he will have the cross 
spirit; for if a man have not the spirit of Christ he 
is none of His. This is the test as to whether a man 
is a Christian or not. It is the test the Master Him- 
self established. We have not accepted the cross or 



The Cross. 



77 



accepted Christ, unless we have accepted the self- 
sacrificing spirit of love for others which Christ 
had. He laid down His life for us, and we ought 
to lay down our lives for the brethren. It is this 
humble self-forgetful spirit, this eager desire to be 
like Christ in helping others which brings spiritual 
victory and true fellowship with God. That is what 
the cross of Jesus means. If we have not that spirit 
we are only baptized heathens. If we are Christians, 
Christ calls upon us to carry on His work of saving 
men by the same method he used, the method of the 
cross. "For Christ suffered for us, leaving us an 
example that we should follow His steps." 

This is the only way to win the world. The world 
will be saved by the cross uplifted two thousand years 
ago only as it sees the same sacrifice of love and life 
offered daily by those who are crucified with Christ 
and who are filling up that which was lacking of 
the sufferings of Christ (Col. i, 24), thus complet- 
ing the Atonement. 



V. 



THE DIVINITY OF MAN. 

"Ye are Gods." — Ps. lxxxii, 6. "Made in the image 
of God "— -Gen. i, 27. 

This is an astonishing declaration, so sensational 
that if it were not God's word in God's Word, it 
would be counted rank heresy; a declaration so 
overlooked and forgotten that some here might 
wonder whether, after all, it is not a falsehood of 
Satan instead of being the affirmation of Jehovah. 
No, it was Jehovah who said "Ye are Gods," and 
the term used is the strongest name for God, Blohim, 
the creative name, the very term used in that tre- 
mendous statement of Genesis, "In the beginning 
God (Blohim) created the heaven and the earth — 
and man in His own image." Really the latter ex- 
pression, so familiar to us, ought, of itself to have 
convinced us that man and God are kin ; "for," says 
the apostle (and he was talking to heathen) "we 
are His offspring." God is not a foreign potentate 
and arbitrary lawgiver; He is a relative. 

78 



The Divinity of Man. 79 



Man has a divine origin. That is true by what- 
ever method God created him. I am not saying 
anything against evolution as a method of divine 
creation. As Drummond says, a miracle is not some- 
thing done quick. If God took an eternity in which 
to develop this elohim, instead of creating him in a 
minute, that would only show in another way the 
worth of the man from the standpoint of the Creator. 
But this I do insist upon that man when he first 
appeared was not simply a featherless biped, a 
sorry sort of a brute, differing only from other ani- 
mals in the shape of his thumb or an additional con- 
volution of the brain. Man, when he first appeared, 
was man, divinely created, divinely endowed, a 
"clothed eternity," as Emerson called him, with the 
currents of the universe flowing through him and 
having the Creator as his nearest relative. It was 
not the brute that was his father, but God. When 
you read man's genealogical table you may find 
criminals and idiots in the list, and for all I know, 
somewhere in the list the tiger or the ape ; but ear- 
lier than the criminal, earlier than the tiger or the 
ape, earlier than the fire-mist or the protoplasmic 
jelly, you will find as the first ancestor of the race 
—God. 

He has been with man ever since. We have 



8o 



The: Stars and the: Book. 



thought of God too often as a wonder worker, only 
needed on special occasions or to fill gaps not yet 
quite occupied by the laws of nature ; forgetting that 
the laws of nature are but God's way of doing things, 
and that the best proof of God's presence is not a 
cataclysm or some unexpected novelty of activity 
but the Universe; the regularity, the order, the 
power of which are due to His presence. In Him 
all things live and move and hold together. He is 
not a great God who took dust once and breathed 
life into it and let it go ; He is the ever-present God, 
as much needed to explain the dust as the man, as 
much needed now, and as active now as in the days 
of creation or in the Mosaic era. 

" A fire-mist and a planet, 

A crystal and a cell, 
A jelly-fish and a saurian, 

And caves where the cave-men dwell. 
Then a sense of law and beauty, 

And a face turned from the clod, — 
Some call it evolution, 

And others call it God. 

Iyike tides on a crescent sea-beach, 

When the moon is new and thin, 
Into our hearts high yearnings 

Come welling and surging in ; 
Come from the mystic ocean, 

"Whose rim no foot has trod, — 
Some of us call it longing, 

And others call it God." 



The Divinity of Man. 8i 



I do not, therefore, know or care how God 
created man ; but I do know that when God created 
him he was not brute, but man ; the prince of crea- 
tion, the image of God. When Pompey entered the 
Holy of Holies in Jerusalem he was surprised that 
in it he found no image of Deity, but the Hebrews 
knew what Pompey did not, that man was God's 
image. This is Bible theology. This is twentieth- 
century philosophy. If man's mind were not kin to 
God's mind he could not understand God. If man's 
moral nature were not kin to God's he could not 
obey, he could not commune. If man's affections 
were not kin to God's these two could not love each 
other. Man is normally the image of God. God's 
name is written deep in his nature. Jesus taught 
this in that much misunderstood parable of the lost 
coin. The name on human nature is as distinct as 
Caesar's name on the penny. Man belongs to God. 
He is degraded, fallen, crippled; so soiled and sen- 
sual and selfish and savage, so worldly and flippant 
and brutish, so close to the dirt, 

"He hangs between 
In doubt to deem himself a god or beast." 

That is history. That is experience. That is true 
personally, nationally, racially. To seek in the past 
of this foul world a holy man who has not lost the 
6 



32 



The; Stars and the; Book. 



image of divinity is like seeking the "fossil remains 
of an angel in a bed of coal." Man is degraded; 
but he is not a degraded animal. He is a degraded 
spirit. Sanco Panza remarked that men were as 
God made them, and sometimes a great deal worse. 
He is degraded. But there is hope, since God has 
hope for him. None so hopeful as God. None so 
sure of his ascent as God and those who hear God's 
voice. 

Goethe said, "Man would become more clever, 
more acute; but not happier or better or stronger." 
Renan, so optimistic in his early life, declared at 
last, "Civilization is a failure, human nature is a 
failure." Even Professor Huxley, who for so many 
years cheered the world with the assurance that evo- 
lution was the savior of the race, even he finally 
came to believe that the study of human history was 
"unutterably saddening," with no good prospect 
ahead, the entire "cosmic process" being not only 
non-moral, but immoral. Did not an ancient prophet 
once declare that he that is without God soon comes 
to be also without hope in the world? The man of 
the future, as pictured by such scientists, will con- 
tinue to lose the organs he does not use, and since 
he does not now have to gnaw bones, like the gorilla, 
his teeth will grow worse and worse till they drop 



The Divinity of Man. 



83 



out; since long hair and beard and mustaches are 
all "ornaments acquired by man to charm and allure 
the opposite sex," and since these are no longer 
needed for that purpose — as even a bald-headed man 
with intellect and wealth counts for more in these 
days than some other one with the longest kind of 
whiskers — and since the railroads and the street 
cars have taken away the necessity of traveling long 
distances afoot, therefore the man of the future, 
as pictured by pessimistic science, will be a "tooth- 
less, hairless, slow-limbed animal, with webbed feet, 
who will maintain his position in the foremost files 
of time to come solely upon the strength of one or 
two peculiar convolutions in his brain." 

It is not a pretty picture. It is not a true pic- 
ture. Man is not body born of a beast ; man is soul, 
having kinship with the Infinite Soul. The history 
of man regarded only as a higher beast, without re- 
gard to soul, is like the play of Hamlet "with every- 
thing left out excepting the ghost." 

"Ye are Gods" (elohim), said Jehovah, giving 
to Him His own creative name as He sent him forth 
as His representative on this planet. Man is a 
creator. This world is his creation. It is a very 
different planet from what it was or could have 
been if he had not come. I am not sure but if there 



8 4 



The; Stars and the Book. 



are people on Mars they could see the change. You 
remember the curious suggestion of the scholar who 
proposed to build an immense construction some- 
where, perhaps on the Sahara Desert, representing 
Euclid's famous theorem, taking it for granted that 
the Martians would thus know we were signaling 
them from afar. But we have done better than that. 
Man has taken deserts, bad as that of Sahara, and 
changed them till they have become glorious as the 
Plains of Sharon. He has turned the course of 
mighty rivers and even of the sea itself. He has 
built cities like Venice, and republics like Holland, 
on the very waters of the sea. He has cut vast isth- 
muses and made islands out of continents. He has 
accomplished other and greater exploits, though per- 
haps not so visible to the eye, signaling to other 
worlds that he is here as elohim, creator, ruler, the 
very image of the omnipotent Creator. He has 
honeycombed the planet with mines and taken out 
the hidden treasures hidden there for him alone. He 
has created flowers from weeds and wholesome 
foods from poisonous bulbs. He has created new 
fruits and grains and new soil in which to grow 
them. He has actually changed some species of 
birds from graniverous to carniverous. 

God said to man, "Go, subdue, have dominion" 



The Divinity of Man. 85 



— and man is at it, taking his crown, counted among 
the elohim of the universe. Did you ever think of 
it ? Man is nature's only rival as a mechanic. There 
are a hundred mechanical contrivances — like the 
wheel, lever, valve, tube, etc. — which man has orig- 
inated (not imitated), which are now seen to have 
been also Nature's, that is God's, inventions first. 
So akin are these two workers ! 

Only recently man has begun to think of the at- 
mosphere as his chemical laboratory and to use 
freely the powers of the storm cloud. He will yet 
have complete dominion. To make midday at mid- 
night, to converse with a stranger separated from 
us by two mountain ranges, and see his face as we 
talk ; to heat our homes without fires and cool them 
at will ; all this would have seemed no easier to our 
grandfathers than to stop a blizzard at command, to 
control the action of a volcano, or to make a jour- 
ney to the moon. 

But man's greatest possibility lies in a new 
knowledge of himself. Most people know more of 
minerals than of men; more about training horses 
than children. The day is coming when the educa- 
tion of a child will begin at birth; when mothers 
who, because of their opportunities, ought to be 
better psychologists than any university professors, 



86 



The: Stars and the: Book. 



will become not only trained scientific observers of 
mental phenomena, but directors of it. Even puppies 
have been so trained that they could surpass many 
artists in their discrimination between colors, and by 
this training the brain has been observed to grow 
enormously. It looks as if man might not only de- 
velop the brain he has, but add to it and build up a 
new brain — and thus practically create a new human 
race. I hope this may prove true. Man is a spirit, 
child of the Infinite Spirit, capable of using the best 
physical machinery with ease; better machinery 
than he now has. 

Man deserves a better body. Did not God 
mean him to have it? Perhaps God meant him 
to make it. It is no strange thing, unexpected 
of God, that human life is expanding, the average 
age increasing many per cent every decade. Good 
heredity will completely bar out many diseases and 
all kinds will be prevented when we learn the right 
remedies and learn and obey the laws of health. 
Even now it is rumored that the bacillus of old age 
has been located and the serum discovered which 
can check scarlet fever as easily as antitoxin checks 
diphtheria. It is absolutely true that already our 
great surgeons have been able to make the blind to 
see, those blind from their birth; and the deaf to 



The Divinity of Man. 



87 



hear, even with the eardrum gone. A child's life and 
mental strength has been saved, even after a large 
part of its brain has been destroyed; and the man 
with a stab wound in his heart has gotten well. Even 
the dead child, whose heart has not been beating for 
an hour, has been brought back to life and given to 
her mother. A scientist in the Chicago University 
has even succeeded in taking unfertilized eggs of 
sea urchins, certain worms, and some lower forms 
of vertebrates, and by the application of various 
salts has produced growth and a normal develop- 
ment. That startles many people. It need not. 
God called man elohim, and gave him the world as 
his dominion. He is simply conquering and taking 
possession according to God's expressed will. 

Man as an animal is losing ground. His sense 
of smell, his keenness of sight, his strength of limb 
are not equal to the creatures of the jungle. But 
man as a spirit is on the gain. He has made arms 
for himself which can reach across the continent 
and an ear which can hear a whisper a thousand 
miles away. He has made a new eye that can see 
twenty million suns where his grandfather saw only 
blue sky ; an eye so keen that it can not only see the 
populations in a drop of water but the scales of the 



88 



The: Stars and the: Book. 



creaturres that swim in it. He has created a new 
sense by means of the sensitive photographic plate 
so that he can now see pictures of worlds too distant 
for even the largest telescope to reveal them. 

Man is a kinsman of the Almighty Creator. 
Man is not body possessing soul, but soul possessing 
body, and capable of infinite progression because in- 
finitely endowed. "Ye are Gods," says Jehovah — 
not actually, but possibly; not yet, but hereafter. 
Ah, that is the great word. Peter the Great whis- 
pered that as his last word on earth — "Hereafter!" 
Science teaches that only the qualities and powers 
survive and grow which are to be of service to the 
creature possessing them. But if that is true, there 
are almost infinite possibilities ahead for the human 
race, since even in the hand and brain of the lowest 
savage there are immeasurable latent powers, pow- 
ers which have been of no actual use to him nor to 
any known ancestor. The hand which never carved 
anything but a war club can become the hand of a 
sculptor; the voice which seems only fitted to ac- 
company the tom-tom, can become the voice of a 
poet or philosopher. What shall we say of these 
latent capabilities? No less a man than Professor 
Alfred Russell Wallace has distinctly claimed, as a 
scientific conclusion, that it is not the past but the 



The: Divinity of Man. 89 



future history of the race which explains man's 
outfit. 

The first time man is seen on the planet he pos- 
sesses powers, capacities, endowments, which even 
then entitle him to the lordship and dominion of the 
earth, and man has not yet reached his limit or used 
all his powers. Again and again we are surprised 
at some new achievement proving* that man is 
greater in his possibilities than we had before sup- 
posed — a power of mastery over the animal king- 
dom so that by a look or uplifted finger he can turn 
the wildest beast into an obedient slave ; a power of 
strength, so that in time of stress a weak man finds 
himself endowed with the strength of ten ; a power 
of memory, so that the ignorant servant girl can re- 
peat pages and pages from a language unknown to 
her ; a mathematical power, so that the little colored 
boy, who never studied arithmetic, can name by in- 
stinct the answer to long calculations before the 
smartest university man has been able to solve the 
problem ; a power of knowledge, under certain con- 
ditions, so great that in the olden time those who 
possess this hypnotic, mesmeric, telepathic power 
would have been called wizards and demi-gods; a 
power over disease, so that by a touch or by mere 
mental contact many, very many, diseases can be re- 



90 The Stars and the: Book. 

lieved. No one doubts that some individuals have 
such powers, therefore they belong to humanity. 
This is a part of the dominion God gave to man 
when He made him in His image and called him 
elohim. 

Man has not yet taken his throne; but he will 
take it. Man has a future. That will be the best 
part of the world's life. 

" Then work and win, for the world is wide 
And its doors will open on every side. 
Look not on the past with a vain regret, 
For the best things have n't happened yet." 

That is good Scripture. The Bible is the Book of 
the Future of Humanity. The Bible tells us where 
we are going. It proves that science is right when it 
teaches that all things are rising, that there is "an 
ascending energy in the universe ; every type of life 
reaches its culmination — a culmination satisfactory 
to it" — and therefore man will. Without such a 
future the existence of the race would not be con- 
ceivable as a purposeful divine act. Man, as both 
Scripture and science teach, is the crown and mas- 
terpiece of creation, the end of millennium-long pro- 
cesses. But the earth is not man's goal. It is his 
starting point. No great man feels that he has even 
tried all his powers, much less reached their limit. 



The; Divinity of Man. 91 



Every great man feels like Victor Hugo when he 
lay facing death and cried : "I have a future. I 
know now that I am the chrysalis of an archangel." 

Such majestic faculties as man possesses! Yet 
he is always discontented. He is always crying, "I 
shall be satisfied when I awake with His likeness!" 
Nothing less will do. Man is not Deity, but he is the 
descendant, representative, and heir of Deity, and 
believes that at his best he can be "partaker of the 
divine nature." Who is this potency who stretches 
out his hand and seizes mighty forces for his use, 
which only God and he can use; who names the 
planets and ringers the stars and tells what they are 
made of; whose grasp is felt by the earth and sea 
and sky and to whom heavenly worlds send mes- 
sages — even those beyond the power of the telescope 
to see ? Who is he ? Let the Bible answer. These 
are Gods, elohim, — not actually, but possibly; not 
yet, but presently. 

This is the infinite outlook of humanity. Man 
has a million-fold endowment with which to con- 
trol his million-fold environment. He dominates 
history. The world is his toolchest; the atmos- 
phere his laboratory, the stars his measuring rod. 
He is co-worker with God, called by His very 
name, as by His nature, to be a Creator like his 



92 



The: Stars and the: Book. 



Father. He is a creator. This is a new earth since 
he appeared on it. As some one has said his com- 
ing changed it more than a new geological era. He 
has taken continents for his back yard, and seas for 
his roadways, and the sun for his coal bin. He can 
even now use the air for his telephone wire and 
the back of the world to break his electric currents 
with. He has harnessed the cataract and the light- 
ning as his draught horses, and is now lifting him- 
self into the upper air to make it his highway over 
the earth. He will soon control the tornado and 
turn the blast of the hurricane into an seolian harp. 
He is to have dominion over the earth, the good Book 
says, and that means over the lifting power of the 
tide, over the mighty sweep of the waves as they 
dash up against the beach, over the tremendous 
potentialities represented by the weight of the ocean, 
5,000 feet beneath the surface, and over the as yet 
unascertained powers of the interplanetary ether — 
all these he will conquer, he will direct, for as Jeho- 
vah made Moses a God unto Pharaoh, so has He 
made man a God unto this earth and given him do- 
minion and called him by his own mightiest name, 
elohim. 



VI. 



THE HUMANITY OF GOD. 

"And upon the likeness of the throne was the like- 
ness as the appearance of a man above upon it." 
— Ezek. i, 26. 

EzekieIv was the mystic of the Old Testament. 
He was the profoundest and most exalted thinker 
among the prophets, unless we except Isaiah at his 
best. He was a seer of visions more majestic than 
ever before or ever afterwards met the eye of man 
until St. John on Patmos saw again that "Glory 
of God." There can be no doubt that of all the 
prophets this is the one the beloved disciple loved 
best. In St. John's highest hour of rapture he 
saw the vision that Ezekiel had seen six centuries 
before and described it in phrases strikingly similar. 

Ezekiel developed a theology in his prophecy 
so broad, so deep, so sublime, so worthy of Jehovah, 
that it dominates the human mind even yet. His 
style of speech was so beautiful that a number of 
his parables, like those of the vine and the Good 

93 



94 



The Stars and the Book. 



Shepherd, were repeated by Jesus Himself, while 
his character was so lofty and his relations with God 
so intimate that He, the One whose name is above 
every name, chose as His favorite title, the name 
which Jehovah gave first to Ezekiel, "Son of man." 
What a man this must have been whom our Lord 
the Christ should thus choose as His namesake. He 
was a "man of the Spirit," given up to holy thoughts 
and heavenly dreams, who has left as his written 
heritage to humanity this blaze of divine visions — 
visions so wonderful, so unique, that Schiller said 
he wished to study Hebrew chiefly because he longed 
to study Ezekiel in his own language. He has well 
been called the "Shakespeare of the Hebrews." 

Yet who reads Ezekiel ? Do you ? Like his name- 
sake, despised and rejected of men while he lived, 
it is also true that this "labyrinth of the mysteries of 
God" which we call the Book of Ezekiel, is neg- 
lected by Christians more than perhaps any other 
book of the Bible. One reason for this, no doubt, is 
the difficulty in understanding the meaning of these 
visions in which all the majesties and splendors of 
earth and heaven seem thrown together in such rich 
confusion. Few men in this hasty age care to take 
the time and pains needed to understand any great 
thinker. So although no man but Moses in all the 



The Humanity of God. 95 



Hebrew history can compare with Ezekiel in the 
work he did for his nation, he being the organizer 
and lawgiver and deliverer of the Israel which was 
buried in captivity in Babylon as Moses was the 
organizer and lawgiver and deliverer of the Israel 
which was buried in Egypt, notwithstanding this 
we Christian people have neglected the Book, 
though full of spiritual treasure because it has been 
hard to understand. 

The key to the book is this vision of God's glory 
from which we have taken our text. Ezekiel and 
the better part of the nation were captives in Baby- 
lon. The Israelitish nation had been humiliated and 
conquered. The temple of Jehovah had been dese- 
crated and the holy city almost destroyed. It seemed 
as if Jehovah could not protect His own. It seemed 
as if the gods of Babylon were stronger than He. 
The discouraged captives in a strange land looked 
about them and saw a finer civilization, a more 
splendid scholarship, a more impressive art and 
architecture than they had ever seen before, while 
the gorgeous religious ritual and the honor offered 
everywhere by these superior people to Bel-Marduk, 
the great god of Babylon, necessarily brought home 
to these poverty-stricken captives from the mountain 
land, the question whether after all they had better 



9 6 



The: Stars and the Book. 



not give up their faith in their ancestral God and 
settle down to enjoy wealth and culture under the 
favor of the god of this greatest kingdom of the 
earth. 

It was a vast temptation. Many of the peo- 
ple yielded to it. We know the names of many 
Jews who settled down in Babylon and could not be 
induced to go back to Jerusalem, even when Cyrus 
permitted them to do so. They took Babylonian 
names and married Babylonian wives, and offered 
libations to the Babylonian god of "Good Luck," 
and went into commercial enterprises trying their 
best to forget that they ever had been Hebrews and 
ever had worshiped the little God of their little na- 
tive country. They are not to be blamed more than 
others for that. They were not alone in that apos- 
tasy. A dozen nations peopled the streets of those 
great cities along the Euphrates, and not one nation, 
save this, has ever been heard of since. A dozen 
religions were buried under the glorious conquests 
of the kings who worshiped Bel-Marduk, and no 
one of them has ever had a resurrection. Who 
could dream that the insignificant nation of Israel 
would ever get a chance to return to its own home, 
or that the conquered God of that little country of 
Palestine, hardly big enough to be a good-sized 



The; Humanity oe* God. 



97 



county in some of our States, would ever again lift 
up his humiliated head? 

Then it was that Ezekiel had his vision of the 
"Glory of Jehovah" — a God as glorious on the Che- 
bar as on the Jordan — a mighty God whose going 
forth is preceded by the whirlwind and the tempest, 
and whose throne is encircled with flashing cycles 
of fire, full of eyes, while above it glows the rain- 
bow, the ancient symbol of God's covenant with His 
people. 

Ezekiel sees more than this as he looks more in- 
tently at Jehovah's throne. It seems to be carried 
in a chariot — this throne upon which He sits — but 
it is a living chariot composed of splendid forms 
with strange animal faces, whose limbs and feet 
shine like burnished brass, and the sound of their 
wings as they move like lightning-flashes is as "the 
sound of great waters, as the voice of the Almighty. ,, 
What are these living forms which uphold Jeho- 
vah's throne? Ezekiel looks again, and I can see a 
strange light come into his eye as he recognizes the 
eagle, the special representative of the great national 
god of Assyria, and also the special symbol of Sha- 
mash, the Babylonian god of life. He sees, too, 
the ox or bull, the well-known symbol of Marduk, 
most revered of all the Babylonian pantheon, and 
7 



98 The; Stars and the Book. 

the lion, symbol of Nergal, the chief god of the 
Babylonian underworld. 

What does it all mean? And I catch my breath 
even now with excitement as I think of Ezekiel, the 
despised captive priest of a despised and conquered 
god, looking at that vision and reaching the tremen- 
dous conclusion that Jehovah, the God of Israel, is the 
God of the whole earth, infinitely above these deities 
of Babylon. Before the eagle and the ox and the lion 
the whole population of the earth at that very time 
were prostrating themselves, even the great king 
of Babylon, bowing himself in abject fear before 
them and covering his body with amulets to escape 
their fury. But now Ezekiel sees that these are all 
servants of Jehovah, implicitly obeying him, humbly 
honoring him ; these greatest Babylonian gods that 
were supposed to control the powers of life and 
death and the underworld were fit only to act as 
draught horses for this greatest God, Jehovah, — 
bound as obedient captive slaves to his chariot 
wheels ! 

Never was the Hebrew people so tempted as in 
Babylon, because of its brilliant civilization, to ac- 
cept also its fascinating idol worship which con- 
trolled the wealth and fashion of this most famous 
capital of the earth. But Ezekiel's vision saved the 



The Humanity of God. 



99 



nation from this. They went into Babylon idolators ; 
a people which had in almost every generation pre- 
viously sunk into some form of idol worship. They 
came out of captivity ready to die for their im- 
movable faith in the all-powerfulness of the one God 
for whom the gods of the heathen served but as a 
footstool. 

But Ezekiel's vision of God is not yet described 
fully. He has told of the four living creatures and 
the flashing wheels, wheel in wheel, and the glorious 
throne set upon this living chariot, and then he 
pauses too amazed to tell what else he sees — until 
at last out of his astonished lips, comes the utter- 
ance, "And I saw the likeness of the throne and upon 
the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the 
appearance of a man above upon it." Ah ! I do not 
wonder Ezekiel hesitated to tell it. Xo wonder that 
he felt himself compelled to repeat again and again 
that he only claimed to have seen the "appearance 
of the likeness" of a man on God's throne; for no 
one in all the earth for six centuries to come could 
understand the vision. It almost seemed a blas- 
phemous thing to say that even in vision he had seen 
a man upon Jehovah's throne. It seemed enough 
to take away the prophetic honor (and Ezekiel him- 
self was evidently astonished bevond words at the 



IOO 



The: Stars and the Book. 



sight) to see a man in God's place. But Ezekiel saw 
it and he had to tell the truth. He did see the like- 
ness as the appearance of a man on Jehovah's throne 
— a human God! 

All that it taught Ezekiel I can not tell. He 
must finally have caught the fundamental truth so 
powerfully taught by the vision — a truth we need to 
remember as well as he — that God is human; that 
He is not a being of a nature alien from humanity, 
but that He has human feeling, human tenderness, 
human compassion. 

O, it is a great thing to know that the One who 
rules the universe has human sympathy ! Jerusalem 
is in ashes; the people are crying and moaning; 
they are homeless and lonely and poor and suffering. 
It is much to know that God, yea the great God en- 
throned above all gods, can give them and will give 
them human pity and help. The humanity of God ! 
That is a most Biblical doctrine. His Deity no one 
denies, yet, paradoxical as it may seem, it is equally 
true that God is human and the Bible empha- 
sizes this doctrine as strongly as the other. God is 
human ; i. e., the omnipotent Creator has a fellow- 
feeling and a common nature with His creature. 
God and man are kin. Why did we not always 
know that? How could man be in God's image, as 



The; Humanity of God. ioi 



we have always been taught, unless God were also 
in man's image ? God is human ; infinitely wise and 
powerful, and yet tenderly and truly human. 

God is human in His thinking, or the human 
could not understand him when he speaks. God is 
human in His feeling ; how we need to learn and re- 
member that. God is as good, at least as good, as 
we are. God loves as much as we do, at least that. 

Whittier's boy, who wished God was good and 
tender as his father, lived as far back as Ezekiel's 
day, and the answer to this world-long cry of human 
need for a God that was human in his feelings 
toward His children came in this vision to Ezekiel, 
teaching him that on the throne of the universe was 
One glorious and almighty, yet having "the like- 
ness as the appearance of a man." 

Ah, there are many puzzles in the Bible and in 
theology ; there are many mysteries in life, but over 
all, more certain than any theory or speculation or 
dogma, like the rainbow about the throne, is this 
eternal truth, God is human. The Deity has a fel- 
low-feeling and a human sympathy with man. He 
is as good as the best husband, "Thy Maker is thy 
husband." He is as pitiful as the best father, "for 
as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth 
them that fear Him." He is as loving and gentle as 



102 The; Stars and the; Book. 

the tenderest mother, for, says He, "A mother may 
forget her sucking child that she should not have 
compassion upon the son of her womb; yea, she 
may forget, but not I." 

Thank God for the revealed humanity of the 
One upon the throne. The ancient prophet may not 
have known the full meaning of the "man upon the 
throne." He hesitated to affirm that he had ac- 
tually seen, even in vision, a man on God's throne; 
but, since the coining of Jesus, we dare to say: 

" Through the thunder comes a human voice 
Saying, ' O heart I made, a heart beats here ! 
Face my hands fashioned see it in myself!' " 

And that leads us naturally to the thought of 
the Incarnation. I think this vision of Ezekiel alone 
would prove, what all thinkers must admit, that the 
Incarnation was not an extraordinary or arbitrary 
manifestation of God's nature. Rather, it was God's 
natural manifestation. God always had a human 
heart. The Incarnation in Jesus was the manifes- 
tation of what God had always been. Ezekiel saw 
God as a man upon the heavenly throne of power. 
Six hundred years later the world at Calvary saw 
God as a man upon the cross throne of love. Fifty 
years later St. John saw a man with pierced hands 
on the throne of the Eternal. The three are one. 



The; Humanity of God. 103 



It means simply that God always had and always 
will have a human heart of love for His children. 

God and man always were kin; but never 
till God displayed Himself in Jesus, showing what 
He really was in His deepest eternal nature, never 
till then, did man believe it and rejoice in it. And 
too many fail to do that yet. Like Ezekiel, they 
are afraid to accept the happy fact that God is as 
good as Jesus, always has been and always will 
be; One who is ever seeking to help the burden- 
bearer, to welcome back the prodigal, to be friends 
with the sinners (the worst of sinners) if they will 
only allow the friendship and permit the help, glad 
to break the chains and unlock the prison doors for 
the worst of men, and willing to be physician and 
nurse and comrade and servant to every needy one. 

And there is one more thought in the text that I 
can not omit. This is not simply a vision of the In- 
carnation. Ezekiel knew nothing of the Incarnation. 
What he saw was the likeness of the appearance of a 
man upon the throne; that is, humanity crowned 
and sceptered and enthroned with God. That is 
what he saw, and that is philosophic. The wor- 
shiper becomes like the one he worships. Let a 
man, even the worst of men, begin really to asso- 
ciate with God, and the beast begins to be killed out 



104 T H S Stars and the Book. 

of him, and he begins to be human like Jesus, — 
like God ! He begins to realize what it means to be 
a man when he sees a man on God's throne. Is that 
a man? Then I am not a man yet, but I may be. 
It means more to be a man than we have generally 
thought. The "measure of a man," says the revela- 
tor, "that is the measure of an angel." The measure 
of a man, says Jesus, that is, to be like Me, to fol- 
low Me. The man who reaches that measure shall 
judge angels. 

Ah! we haven't reached our manhood yet. To 
reach that would be to reach the throne. Humanity 
and divinity are so near together that Jesus could 
have both and could promise to His true disciples 
that they should be like Him, one with Him even as 
He was one with the Father, and should sit with 
Him on the Father's throne. 

Jesus promised this. O, man; thy honor is 
the astonishment of angels! Thou art brother of 
the God-man, son of Jehovah, heir apparent to the 
throne of the eternal. Do not lose thy birthright. 
This is thy birthright, though multitudes are selling 
it for less than a mess of pottage. This is thy birth- 
right, to be one with God, filled with all the fullness 
of God, and then to sit down on the throne of God 
forever. 



The; Humanity of God. 105 



If you would know what you can be, look at 
Christ, for He promised that you should be like Him. 

" O Saul" (O soul) it shall be 
A Face like my face that receives thee ; a Man like to me, 
Thou shalt love and be loved by forever ; a Hand like this 
hand 

Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee. 
See the Christ stand!" 



VII. 



PAUL AND NERO. 
An Historical Contrast. 

"I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion." — 
2 Tim. iv, 7. "Fear not, Paul, for thou must 
stand before Nero." — Acts xxvii, 24. (N. V.) 

Both texts doubtless refer to the same incident. 
It is a thrilling thing to think of Paul as a Christian 
gladiator in the arena, facing the Nubian lion with 
its open mouth and hungry jaws, and only delivered 
either by some power from heaven, or by the inter- 
position of Aquila or Priscilla in some heroic way. 
Yet really to stand before Nero was more terrific in 
danger and more tragic in outcome. Nero was 
worse than the lion. 

One thing we are sure of; these two men once 
faced each other — Paul and Nero. The Word of 
God says that. It was a great day for each of them 
when they looked into each other's eyes, the two 
men most renowned of that generation; the two 
106 



Paul and Nero. 



107 



men most talked about, then and now, of any men in 
Rome. Nero, the sovereign of the world; Paul, the 
prisoner, condemned as a heretic by his own nation, 
because of his faith in Jesus. They faced each 
other, these two. It was a great day. God had or- 
dained it. In the midst of an awful storm an angel 
bore to Paul the message that even the Euroclydon 
could not hurt him, because he "must stand before 
Nero." 

Now they stand face to face, these two strongest 
men, the best hated and most celebrated men of the 
empire. Paul sees one who as a babe was exquis- 
itely beautiful, but whose face by years of dissipa- 
tion had been marred; although even yet at times 
it could look kingly and most attractive ; a man a 
little below medium height with chestnut hair 
dressed in rows of curls, dull gray eyes, a thick neck 
and terrible lips. 

Nero sees a man of like stature with himself, or 
even smaller; a man whom his enemies describe as 
"mean of bodily presence," and whose eyes, even his 
friendly biographers assert to have been so weak 
that he found it difficult to do more than sign his 
name to his letters, and yet a man whose massive 
brow and firm lips and every feature betoken his 
masterful character and tremendous power of will. 



108 The: Stars and the: Book. 

Draw the contrast between Nero, chief of the 
pagans, and Paul, leader of the despised sect of the 
Nazarenes; the one choicest flower and fruit of 
heathendom, the other of Christianity. 

I. Every one must be struck with the contrast 
in their position. Paul stands as a prisoner. He 
was accustomed to this. The damp, cold, solid walls 
and prison furniture were familiar to this man who 
had been "in prisons oft." Nero sits on his throne 
in the "golden palace" which he had just completed, 
a palace so vast that its triple porticos were a mile 
in length; its roof so high that it could cover the 
golden statue of himself standing a hundred and 
twenty feet in height. The park about the palace 
was like a forest. The lake in the midst was like a 
sea in extent. Paul was accustomed to prison fare ; 
Nero to the dainties of the royal table, fish from 
foreign rivers and crushed pearls to increase the 
cost of precious deserts. Paul wore travel-stained 
garments, the garments of a weaver, having proba- 
bly but one suit to his name, and having to shiver 
with the cold until the cloak, which he had forgotten, 
could be sent to him by Timothy, as winter came on. 
(2 Tim. iv, 10.) Nero never wore the same gar- 
ment twice; would stake four hundred thousand 
sesterces on one throw of the dice, and never trav- 



PauIv and Nero. 



109 



eled with less than a thousand baggage carts, even 
his mules being shod with silver. Yet Nero was 
the poor man, and Paul had the true riches; Nero 
was the slave, it was Paul who was the free man. 

II. Come now to these men viewed as to their 
intellectual endowments and accomplishments. 

Nero had all the training that the greatest teach- 
ers of Rome could give him. Seneca, the great 
philosopher, was his private tutor. He prided him- 
self upon his wit, his eloquent speech, his perfection 
of elocution, his taste for the beautiful. He was 
celebrated as singer, actor, poet. 

Paul was not an actor, yet he had become, be- 
cause of the tragedy of his great life, a spectacle to 
men and angels ; he did not pose as singer or poet, 
yet his "poem of love" has no equal in the language. 
More than this, so lofty was his thought, so keen his 
logic, so convincing his reasoning, that to-day, 
while no word of all Nero's writings is remembered, 
even Paul's private letters and careless, offhand ut- 
terances are cherished by millions of admirers, and 
his ethical writings and religious arguments are ac- 
cepted to-day as standard by the whole thinking 
world ; while his writings show such a perfection of 
style and such philosophic grasp of thought that it 
has been said Paul and Seneca must have known 



no The: Stars and the Book. 



each other. In worldly position Nero outranked 
Paul in the eyes of his generation, and in literature 
he was thought of as supremely his superior, but 
time has changed this judgment. Paul, not Nero, 
is now thought of as the chief man of his genera- 
tion, as the great intellect of that century, and pow- 
erful in letters. 

III. Again let us compare these men. Man is 
not all intellect or will. What of the affectional na- 
ture of these men? Great thinkers are not always 
men of heart. Perhaps Nero outranked Paul in 
this. 

Look at Paul, and greater even than his intellec- 
tual genius and the power of his logic, stand out 
his wealth of sensibility, his tenderness and delicacy 
of sentiment. He weeps over his Churches and 
mentions by name with loving adjectives a list of 
three or four or eight or ten special friends in every 
letter he writes. And how they loved him ! They 
"fell on his neck" and "kissed him," and followed 
him miles when he was forced to leave them, sent 
him gifts seven hundred miles sometimes ; and when 
they saw his poor injured eyes they felt like pluck- 
ing out their own eyes if they could thus relieve his 
affliction. How tender, how womanly, was this lion- 
hearted, dove-hearted man, who could cry, "Though 



Paul and Nero. 



hi 



I speak with the tongues of men and angels and 
have not love, I am nothing !" 

Now look at Nero. No doubt he was very sensi- 
tive, too. No doubt he demanded love. If any 
young woman failed, for example, to return his offer 
of affection he signed her death warrant the same 
day. Nay, it is said that if any man "looked melan- 
choly in his presence," as if to be with him was not 
better than to be in Paradise, he had him killed on 
the spot. It is certain that when his faithful old 
captain of the guards, Burrhus, complained one day 
of sore throat, this man said, "I can cure it ; I have 
a sure remedy," and sent him a dose of poison. 
Every one knows about his tutor, Seneca, who, 
when he seemed to be getting more popular with 
the scholars of Rome than the young emperor, re- 
ceived one day a polite note from his old pupil re- 
questing him to commit suicide, which he did, know- 
ing that thus only could he escape a worse fate. 

This man Nero, whom Suetonius calls a "wild 
beast," and Paul spoke of as "a roaring lion," killed 
every brother and almost every relative he had in 
the world. His sick aunt, who loved him very much, 
said to him once while a boy, as she stroked his 
smooth chin, "Let me but live to see this shaved for 
the first time, and I die content." "Good," says he, 



ii2 The Stars and the Book. 

"I will be shaved at once." And ordering his phy- 
sicians to give her a death potion, he seized her es- 
tates even before the breath left her body. He had 
his first wife, Octavia, divorced, and then murdered, 
and twelve days after he married his second wife, 
he kicked her to death, "only because she found 
fault with him for returning home late from driving 
his chariot," so says Suetonius. Three times he 
tried to poison his mother and failed. Finally he 
constructed machinery by which the floor over her 
bedchamber would fall and crush her while she was 
asleep, and when this failed he constructed a ship 
and sent her on a journey, kissing her "in a very 
cheerful mood" as they parted. The ship, of course, 
fell to pieces as soon as it left the harbor, and 
though the queen mother escaped even this calamity, 
it was but a short time until she was murdered in 
her bed by a hired assassin. 

Such was Nero. The contrast between Paul 
and Nero is the contrast between paganism and 
Christianity. In Nero you see the picture of a 
world without God and without a Savior. In 
Paul you see the picture of a world redeemed 
and sanctified and transformed. In Nero you 
see what passion unrestrained will do for a man; 
in Paul you see what "Christ in me" will do for a 



PauIv and Nero. 



113 



man. Nero shows us what hell is, and how it can 
begin here and now. Paul shows us how a man of 
like passions as ourselves can live, having his "con- 
versation in heaven." In Nero we see the very same 
passions which we ourselves are fighting, let loose 
and having dominion. In Paul we see the powers 
and virtues which God offers to us as he offered 
them to him, accepted, used, and multiplied in the 
using. 

IV. This leads us to notice the contrast in the 
views of life and in the ambitions of these two men. 
Nero was very ambitious and so was Paul. Nero 
sought distinction as a poet, an actor, a musician, 
a charioteer. He won distinction, too. When he 
appeared in the games, even though he appeared 
incognito, the senator who surpassed him, not know- 
ing whom he excelled, lost his head the same night. 
When he appeared on the stage of the theater every 
actor and every spectator hastened to call him the 
star of the company. Indeed, he had five thousand 
robust young fellows dressed richly, hired to ap- 
plaud him and keep their eyes on those who had the 
bad taste not to applaud. When he drove in the 
race and was thrown and had to be helped back and 
held in his seat, he nevertheless won the race and 
was crowned victor. It was a capital crime to call 
8 



U4 



The Stars and the; Book. 



him a poor charioteer or a poor actor or a poor 
singer. So careful was he of his voice that he had 
his vocal teacher constantly by his side to check 
him from straining it. Such was Nero. Such great 
ambition was his; ambition to win the ears of the 
multitude, to speak well, and to succeed in the 
games. 

Paul also was ambitious to win the ears of the 
multitude, seeking them in every city ; ambitious to 
speak as he ought to speak, and craving the prayers 
of his Churches for this end; ambitious to use his 
voice right, so that whatever he did in word or deed 
might be said and done to God's glory. He was am- 
bitious, also, to win a crown, and he "strove man- 
fully" and fought "not as one who beateth the air" 
for a crown that was incorruptible and fadeth not 
away. 

What a contrast between these ambitions ! Nero 
was ambitious to be happy and lived miserably. He 
was ambitious to be popular, and was hated by all. 
He was ambitious to be royal in life, and despicably 
failed. Paul was ambitious to make others happy 
and won happiness himself. He was ambitious to 
do right, scorning the praise of man, and won praise 
from both man and God. He was ambitious to be 
a good "slave of Jesus Christ," and won the place 



Paul and Nsro. 



of "chief apostle" and more than royal honors in 
earth and heaven. The one shocked his age by his 
crimes ; the other turned the world upside down by 
his self-sacrifice for Jesus' sake. 

V. Do you see what makes the difference be- 
tween Nero and Paul? It is not chiefly their nat- 
ural disposition, environment, and heredity. It is 
chiefly the difference in their religious views and 
religious experience. 

They stand here face to face, but a great gulf 
separates them ; a gulf as wide as that between the 
penitent and the blaspheming thief ; a gulf as deep as 
that between Lazarus in Abraham's bosom and 
Dives in the lake of fire. 

Their desires, enjoyments and thoughts of life 
are as opposite as their religious views. Nero as 
emperor was also priest and occasionally conformed 
to the customary outward acts of worship, yet really 
"he held all religious rites in contempt." He was 
an infidel. He did not believe in sin. He claimed 
outright and boldly to be as good as any man on 
earth. He believed all men to be just like himself, 
only some hypocritically tried to hide their crimes. 
For a man to say as Paul did, "I am the chief of 
sinners, the least of all saints," seemed to him the 
vilest hypocrisy and deadliest sin. No wonder he 



n6 The Stars and the; Book. 



persecuted the Christians. This, by the way, was 
the only thing in his life that his biographer praised 
him for. He mentions the persecutions of the 
Christians as one of his few good deeds. He was 
not content with the ordinary method of death for 
Christians, but made a comedy out of it, dressing 
these Christians in skins of lions and then setting 
half-famished dogs upon them. He covered them 
with pitch and oil and turned them into torches with 
which to light his gardens, and as these torches 
writhed, Nero passing by in his chariot, laughed 
and then yawned, wishing for some new luxury of 
crime to excite his interest. Such was Nero, the 
man who did not believe in sin. And Paul stands 
before him, Paul who loved to reason of righteous- 
ness and judgment to come, Paul who never feared 
to speak the truth to mortal man. Would you not 
like to know what he said to him? No wonder Paul 
was beheaded shortly after. 

Only the man whose conscience is seared as with 
a hot iron can say, I am no sinner. Nero said that. 
That was the first article of his creed. And the sec- 
ond was like unto it, I need no new birth; I need 
no Savior. Indeed Nero on his coins calls himself 
"the savior of the world." He believed in human 
nature simply working itself out naturally. He be- 



PAuiy and Nero. 



117 



lieved that civilization, sestheticism, culture, educa- 
tion, could be the salvation of the world. He got all 
of that he could. How he would have mocked at 
this man, Paul, who preached a Savior not himself ! 
He would have said, "All that I do is natural to 
man, and therefore right. I do not doubt that you 
Christians need a Savior, but I do not." That was 
the second article of his creed. I have known people 
in this city who had the same creed that Nero had. 

The third article of his creed was this: There 
is no God higher than myself. Indeed Nero claimed 
himself to be god, and altars were raised to him and 
sacrifices offered to him, and he refused any wor- 
ship to a superior power. How that reminds one of 
the modern philosophy that teaches the deification of 
humanity ; that there is no God greater than man — 
and it ought to remind us of the historic f^ct that 
only such a man as Nero will accept such worship. 
More than once Paul, because of his mighty works, 
was thought by the idolatrous populace to be some 
deity, and once bullocks covered with garlands were 
brought to be sacrificed. But Paul refused the 
honor. It is only a man like Nero who can think 
himself to be God. 

VI. In conclusion, note the significant and start- 
ling fact, that this man Nero, this last of the Csesars, 



n8 The; Stars and the Book. 

who claimed to be a god, this incarnation of unbe- 
lief, who scoffed at a future life and the Christian's 
hope, who boasted of his infidelity and the courage 
and comfort of his philosophy, when he came to die, 
met death very differently from this man Paul. 

Both of these men met death within a few 
months of each other, probably not long after Paul 
and Caesar, for the second time, looked into each 
other's eyes. The circumstances are well known, 
having been recorded by contemporaries. The em- 
peror is spending his days in pleasure in Greece, 
giving great gifts to those who can invent new 
methods of sensual enjoyment. One day a messen- 
ger brings to him news of a revolt in one part of 
the kingdom. What cares he? He sings and plays 
and laughs and scorns all fear. Another messenger 
comes and whispers in his ear. His face pales, he 
gasps and faints away at the news. His army has 
revolted, his generals are faithless. What shall he 
do? That is the question which must be answered 
as he awakes from his faint. Shall he beg pardon 
of the populace and ask some low office at their 
hands? But he fears to show himself lest they kill 
him. Shall he drown himself? Yes, that would be 
philosophic and heroic, he thinks, but he trembles 
and hesitates. What shall he do? He flees to the 



Paul and Nero. 



119 



house of one of his freedmen, crawling on his hands 
and knees through the drain to get into the slave's 
apartment. Barefoot because of hasty flight, with 
bloodshot eyes, he has fled to the room of a slave to 
die, and still his courage fails him. His very bond- 
servants urge him to manhood. He seizes two dag- 
gers, theatrically tries their edges, then sheaths 
them again. He can not die. He breaks down and 
weeps convulsively, and begs some of his compan- 
ions to commit suicide that he may see how to die. 
This man that had killed his best friends by the 
score, and murdered almost all his relatives ! The 
clang of horses' hoofs sounds in his ears. Three 
minutes more and he will be captured, and if cap- 
tured, flayed alive. He must die ! He nervously 
holds a dagger to his throat, but can not strike, and 
does not strike. His slave is forced to drive the 
dagger home to save him from torture and public 
shame. 

So died the last of the Caesars. Died he not as 
the fool dieth? His last words, as one pretended to 
stanch the flow of blood, were, "It is too late, too 
late !" His eyes in his agony almost started from 
his head, and were the terror of all the friends who 
beheld him after death. But he left few friends. 



120 



The Stars and the Book. 



The city held a jubilee on the day of his funeral. 
So much for the palace, the "golden house" of 
Csesar ; so much for the death of the infidel emperor. 

Look at the prison. To-morrow Paul the Chris- 
tian is to die. The sentence has been passed; the 
executioner is now sharpening his ax, and he knows 
it. Paul, Paul, how do you feel now ? Is your faith 
worth anything now, Paul ? Confess now the worth- 
lessness of your hope. 

And I see a light flame in his eye, the light 
never seen except on the Christian's face; and now 
he takes up his pen, this old man, to write a few 
words to his dear friend Timothy. This is his last 
letter, and he knows it. Look over the shoulder of 
this man, his back covered with scars, and watch 
the words which are being traced by the chained 
hand : "I charge thee, therefore, before God, preach 
the Word, be instant in season and out of season." 
Evidently he still believes in the same old gospel 
and expects it to live, even if he dies. 

"Endure afflictions, make full proof of thy min- 
istry, for I am now ready to be offered and the time 
of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good 
fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the 
faith ; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of 
righteousness which the Lord, the righteous Judge, 



Paul and Nero. 



121 



shall give me in that day, and not to me only but 
unto all them also that love His appearing." 

Thus they died, Nero, the young man of scarcely 
thirty years, with the old, worn-out life, and weary, 
discontented heart; and Paul, "the aged/' with the 
young heart and the hope of eternity thrilling his 
soul. Thus they died Nero, the poet, the play- 
actor, the singer, the man of letters, the emperor, 
the unbeliever, who lived unto himself and died as 
the fool dies ; and Paul, the preacher, missionary, 
theologian, philosopher, reformer, Christian. They 
died, but that is not all. They died probably within 
a few weeks of each other. Did they go to the same 
place? Are Paul and Nero now sitting together in 
peace? Where did Paul go from that Roman 
prison? Where did Nero go from that freedman's 
villa? 

Listen ! I hear a wailing, and weeping, and 
gnashing of teeth. Death, death, death ! 

Listen! I hear singing and shouting and the 
voice of praise like the voice of many waters. Life, 
life, life! 

Paul, Paul, brave, victorious Christian, may our 
faith be as your faith ; may our life be as your life ; 
may our reward be as your reward! Surely you 
have been delivered out of the mouth of the lion. 



122 



The Stars and the Book. 



Yes, they live yonder and they live here. Their 
works follow them. And when some great reformer 
like Luther or Wesley appears on the earth and 
changes the whole earth for the better, the highest 
compliment we can pay him is to say : He is almost 
equal to St. Paul. 

And when we have a dog to name we call him 
Nero. 



VIII. 



THE SILENCE OF JESUS CONCERNING 
THE FUTURE LIFE A REVELA- 
TION OF JOY. 

"In My Father's house are many mansions; if it 
were not so I would have told you" — John 
xiv, 2. 

These words were spoken when the disciples 
were dismayed at the prospect of separation from 
their friend and Master. They had expected Him 
to live on the earth and reign forever, and suddenly 
they were shocked with the statement that He was 
now to die. It was then that Jesus comforted them 
with these words. 

The hope of heaven; what a blessed hope that 
is. The life beyond the grave; men have dreamed 
of it since the dawn of history, and before any his- 
tory was written. Most skeptics accept this one 
doctrine of faith. Was it not Mr. Buckle, the enemy 
of supernaturalism, who yet acknowledged that it 
was only faith in a future life which saved the race 
123 



124 The Stars and the: Book. 

from despair? Was it not Mr. Ingersoll who said, 
"When one dies we will say 'We hope to meet 
again?' " Was it not Mr. Thomas Paine who even 
attempted an argument for immortality declaring 
that only the same Omnipotence which brought the 
soul into being could extinguish it; and he could 
not believe that God would create, simply to 
destroy ? 

But these were hopes only. The greatest phi- 
losophers were never able to reach certainty. Not 
one of the arguments which Plato gives in favor of 
a rational belief in a future life commands the as- 
sent of the best thinkers to-day. Plato, himself, ad- 
mitted that he considered such arguments and specu- 
lations merely a raft on which a man ought only 
to trust himself until he could find some sure "word 
of God" which would more safely carry him. Jesus 
is the Word of God for which Plato longed. Jesus 
gave humanity a hold on heaven such as it never 
had before. He "brought immortality to light." 
Yet our Lord said very little about the future life. 
He never made any picture of it. Rather, our argu- 
ment would be, His very silence concerning the fu- 
ture life proves that the hopes and longings of the 
race will not meet disappointment. If the expecta- 
tions of the disciples had been baseless and false it 



The Future Life. 125 



is unthinkable that such an one as Jesus could have 
been silent. Therefore, though Jesus had never 
said one word concerning mansions in heaven pre- 
pared for the good, yet I would have believed they 
were there and would have based my belief on His 
silence. No one who loved another could see him 
walk forward with hopeful eyes and know he was 
going to bitter disaster and not say one word of 
warning nor seek to check his eager expectancy. 
Here we see the revelation of joy to believers 
wrapped up in our Lord's silences concerning the 
future life. In my Father's house are many man- 
sions — but why do I need to tell you that? Do I 
not know? Then believe Me — "if it were not so I 
would have told you." 

These words may well ring in our ears as among 
the sweetest Jesus ever uttered. They mean that 
these quenchless hopes, these unconquerable in- 
stincts of the human heart are to be trusted. We 
have the authority of Jesus for trusting them. We 
can not prove them to be true, any more than the 
bird could prove its instinct true who turns its face 
towards the south when the winter chill comes on 
and confidently wings its way towards a summer 
land which it has never seen. But we can be sure 
of this: if these instincts were deceiving us, Jesus 



126 



The Stars and the Book. 



would have told us. The Psalmist was sure that 
the bright heavens declared the glory of God; but 
the Psalmist and all other Bible seers would agree 
that God's greatest glory can not be read from the 
inscriptions of the sky, but from his marvelous 
works among the children of men which show forth 
his truthfulness and everlasting love and his glorious 
power to make all things work together for the good 
of his servants and to do exceeding abundantly 
above all they can ask or think. This is a faith in- 
stinctive in the souls of those who have prayed 
most earnestly, "Show me Thy glory. 99 

Said a red Republican of 1793 to a French peas- 
ant: "We are going to pull down your churches 
and steeples and all that recalls to you the supersti- 
tious beliefs in God and a future world." "Citizen,'' 
replied the good Vendean, "pull down the stars 
then." 

As long as the stars hang in the heavens this 
star of hope in God and immortality will burn in 
the human breast. Is it to be trusted ? "If it were 
not so I would have told you." These words of 
Jesus illuminate history. Men talk nowadays of 
the survival of the fittest. It is only the fittest or- 
gan, the fittest idea, the fittest belief, which persists 
age after age. Now go back as far as you may and 



The: Future: Life. 127 



of every age it may be said as Cicero wrote, "There 
is, I know not how, in the minds of men a certain 
presage, as it were, of a future existence, and this 
takes the deepest root and is most discoverable in 
the greatest geniuses and most exalted souls." 

Has the human heart played the race false and 
have the most exalted souls been best fitted for a 
false faith ? "Not so," says Jesus ; "if the universe 
and human nature were on the side of falsehood I 
would have told you." 

Now walk through the Scriptures whose words 
of faith in a glorious future shine as confidently 
and brilliantly as the stars. I know that some 
have doubted whether there is any hint of a fu- 
ture life to be found in the Old Testament, but 
to me there seems an unbroken faith here in a 
happy unseen kingdom, from which occasionally 
flashes some resplendent, holy one with message of 
warning or of love for fallen man or into which 
some holy prophet may be caught up by an em- 
bassy of angels. Hear the cry of joy as the Psalm- 
ist looks beyond the grave: "Thou wilt show me 
the path of life ; in Thy presence is fullness of joy ; 
at Thy right hand are pleasures for evermore." (Psa. 
xvi, 11.) "God will redeem my soul from the power 



128 



The Stars and the; Book. 



of the grave; for He shall receive me." (Psa. xlix, 
15.) "Thou shalt guide me with Thy counsel and 
afterwards receive me to glory. . . . Whom 
have I in heaven but Thee? . . . My flesh and 
my heart faileth, but God is the strength of my 
heart and my portion forever." (Psa. lxxiii, 24-26.) 
"As for me I will behold Thy face in righteousness. 
I shall be satisfied when I awake with Thy like- 
ness." (Psa. xvii, 15.) 

Are these but the rhapsodies of Hebrew poets? 
Yet the disciples believed their-belief and hoped their 
hopes, and it was to them that Jesus said : "Let not 
your heart be troubled. In my Father's house are 
many mansions. Why can you not trust Me with- 
out My saying this ? If it were not so I would have 
told you." We can trust these words. This Old 
Testament was the Bible of the disciples and the 
disciples trusted it and Jesus — it was His Bible, too 
— said : That is right. What it teaches is true ; if 
it were not so I would have told you. 

These blessed silences of Jesus, interpreted by 
the words of the text, do more than prove the mere 
fact of future existence. He knew that the disciples 
in that future life expected "fullness of joy and 
pleasures for evermore," yet He never said : "You 
are mistaken. You expect too much." Does not 



The: Future Life. 129 



that prove that God's children shall be satisfied with 
what awaits them? 

Here is a boy the day before Christmas. All 
the year he has been wanting a sled. This has been 
his great desire. "O, papa, tell me," says he, "will 
I get one? I believe it. Am I right? Can I ex- 
pect it ?" And the father smiles and puts his finger 
on his lips and says, "Never mind, wait and see;" 
and the boy goes away jubilant. I say if that father 
was a true father he would not have kept silence 
unless the boy was to be satisfied — to get what he 
wanted or something better than that. I know well 
one father who said to his children one Christmas, 
"Don't expect anything, I can't satisfy you this 
year." Then after the children went off to bed, 
this father climbed up to their little room and put 
a big penny in each little stocking and the mother 
put in a doughnut dolly or pony, and that was all 
— and the children were almost satisfied the next 
morning, for they had expected nothing. But what 
if the father had allowed them to expect sleds and 
dolls and trumpets and skates, and then put nothing 
in but a penny and a doughnut ? Our argument to- 
day is that the Son of God could not have allowed 
us to indulge these vast expectations if they were 
not true. He would have warned us. The boy or 
9 



130 The; Stars and the; Book. 

the girl, the man or the woman, whose breast is full 
of visions of great gifts in heaven and upon whom 
Jesus smiles, with his finger on his lips, saying wait 
and see, will not be disappointed. If we were to 
sink into oblivion or to meet with a reception yon- 
der the opposite of what we expect, He would have 
told us. 

Therefore there is to be rest and peace in heaven, 
though no word were written here promising rest 
and peace, because the noblest sons of men have 
ever longed for this and expected it. Heaven 
is to be a home, too. We might know that even if 
the apostle had never said that he was looking for- 
ward to the time when he should be "at home with 
the Lord," for it is my longing and yours and the 
longing of the race— and if it were not so He would 
have told us. 

Does some one ask to-day concerning the dear 
ones who years ago fell asleep in Jesus? Do you 
breathe the prayer of Tennyson, 

"Ah, Christ that it were possible 
For one short hour to see 

The souls we loved that they might tell us what and 
where they be ?" 

The text brings you glad news. These friends 
are safe and happy. Will they know you when you 
arrive? Certainly. As the old farmer said, "Folks 



The Future; Life. 13 1 



know at least as much in heaven as they do on the 
earth." Your best dreams for them are being real- 
ized — at least that. God could not disappoint those 
whose hope was stayed on him. They may have been 
surprised at heaven, but they have not been disap- 
pointed. 

I do not know what heaven is to be altogether, 
but there will be plenty of room there. There are 
many mansions. I have no sympathy, nor has the 
spirit of the Bible any sympathy, with the common 
view that we shall be boxed up behind high walls 
in heaven. John the Revelator never meant that. 
I heard of one man who had calculated the number 
of cubic feet in a building 12,000 furlongs high, and 
12,000 furlongs broad, and 12,000 furlongs long, 
and decided that, if built up solid, it would give a 
room, O, perhaps, twenty feet square to every one 
who would be saved. He thought he had solved a 
great problem concerning heaven ! Out upon such 
calculations ! I could not help pitying the poor pris- 
oners cooped up in the middle of such a box as that 
would be. It is bad enough to live in a "flat" in 
this life without continuing that sort of cramped 
existence eternally. The text is opposed to any 
such notion. Jesus did not say, "In My Father's 
house are many rooms/' as if each saint was to 



132 The: Stars and the: Book. 

be limited to a room or a small suite, but in My 
Father's house are many mansions, "palatial 
abodes," awaiting the redeemed. I expect heaven 
will be large enough for every inhabitant to have a 
lawn, or a park, all to himself. I look for wood- 
lawns and meadows and mountain sides on which 
the redeemed can enjoy the companionship of choice 
friends, or of "Jesus only." Some people think this 
earth some day is going to be heaven. I have no 
objection, only if so it will have to be a very different 
earth from what it is now. As it is now this little 
world is not large enough. It might do for an 
arbor or a lane in which to take a morning walk; 
but it is not big enough for the home of the saints. 

Where will heaven be then? Perhaps after all, 
those older astronomers were right who claimed 
that all the systems of the universe discoverable 
through the telescope were wheeling about some 
central world; a world as much larger and brighter 
than any we can see as the sun is larger and brighter 
than an electric light. Who knows but what that 
"broad and ample road, whose dust is gold and 
pavement stars," which we call the Milky Way may 
be but a thoroughfare for the angels leading to the 
central capital of the universe ? 

O, says some one, that 's speculation and be- 



Ths Future: Life. 



i33 



sides modern astronomers have decided such a 
world is too big to expect. Yes, it is speculation, 
but it is not exaggeration. There is nothing too big 
to be expected of God. If it can be said of the reve- 
lations of the Spirit to saints on this earth, "eye hath 
not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into 
the heart of man the things which God hath pre- 
pared for them that love Him;" how much more 
may this be said of the revelations which lie yonder 
in those unexplored glories of the future world. 
We do not exaggerate though we may speculate. 
We may not dream it as it is, but no dream of ours 
can excel the reality. No language of earth, no 
imagination of poet or artist, no hope, however vast, 
can equal the reality which Jesus has gone to pre- 
pare for them that love Him. How do we know 
that? Well, once there was a man, whether out of 
the body or in the body he could not tell — others 
have thought they knew, but if they did they knew 
more than the apostle — who was caught up to the 
third heaven, to Paradise, and saw mysterious 
glories, and heard unspeakable words, which he 
could never tell of, but which he could never forget ; 
and who in all the years that followed looked with 
hungry eyes to the future, realizing that it would be 
"far better to be at home with the Lord." 



134 



The Stars and the Book. 



So an exile a few years after on a lonely island 
got a vision of God and of the city of God; and 
when he tried to tell what he had seen he could only 
paint a picture in which he put all the precious 
things he had ever seen or heard of, gold and gems 
and pearls and palaces and crystal seas and rain- 
bows and thrones — and the one who understands 
that book is not yet born. O, but you say, is it a 
revelation then, if no one understands it? Yes, it 
reveals to us that the unrevealed is better than our 
best thought. 

Let the eye do its best to picture what heaven 
is, entranced before all the wonders of light and 
color, foaming ocean and flowering mountain, and 
gorgeous sunset — heaven shall be that, or better 
than that. Let the ear rejoice in its anthems, 
its psalms, its hosannas, its hallelujahs, the voices 
of birds and music of rippling streams and thunder- 
ing cataracts, the whispers of the evening wind, the 
shouts of children and the voices of our dear ones, 
better than all — the music of heaven shall be that, 
or better than that. Let the heart bring its hopes, its 
loves, its faiths, its ecstasies, its revelations, its com- 
munions — heaven shall be that, or better than that. 

Even Jesus himself did not attempt to describe 



The Future Life. 



i35 



heaven to us. the glorious revelation of that 
silence, interpreted by these words which give per- 
mission to the human soul to stretch itself in most 
confident expectation, "if it were not so I would 
have told you." He knew what awaits us. He knew 
John's longing and ours, and He never warned us 
against hoping too much or believing too much. "I 
have much to tell you," says Jesus, "but you can 
not bear it now." That was the reason he kept 
silence. Nothing we dream is too noble or great 
for realization. A wondrous dream is in our soul 
as we lie down and place our head on the old Book 
to die, like the dream in the breast of the worm which 
feels its old house decaying and dreams a dream 
of song and beauty, of vast and flowering gardens 
and new powers and wings like the butterfly which 
soon are to be its very own. Is this dream too beau- 
tiful for realization ? No, God will not even disap- 
point a caterpillar, and the worm gets its wings. 

Will not the Creator treat us as well as he treats 
the worm? Yea, verily. We are the sons of God, 
and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but 
we know that we shall be with Him and be like Him. 
When we ask what are the glories prepared for the 
sons of God, redeemed and ransomed at the great- 



136 The Stars and the Book. 

est cost even heaven could pay; when we ask what 
means that vision of golden streets and gates of 
pearl and seas that shine like glass and fire, Jesus 
only answers : "Wait and see. They are there, that 
or better than that. If it were not so I would have 
told you." Presidently, if faithful, the strange, glo- 
rious, divine surprise shall burst upon us. 



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